Black Steel (17 page)

The prosthetic glove he wore was a bit clunky. It looked like a real hand, the plastic flesh tinted to nearly a perfect match for Sleel's own skin. Apparently there was a medical specialization that concerned itself almost solely with the cosmetic aspects of such things. A tech with a computer chose from thousands of tones and shadings so that the fake would be indistinguishable from the real. A long way from the crude matching that Red had done for the spetsdod bases when he'd issued Sleel weapons back at the Villa years ago.

Underneath, the new hand was larger and itself workable, though still too small to function alone with the full-sized forearm muscles. The nerve impulses to the hand were mostly right, the induction pickups routing them to the glove better than the ones in the robotic arm he'd once worn, but there was still a tiny gap between the thought and the movement.

The sensitivity left something to be desired, too. Not a problem as long as you allowed for it, he wouldn't be crushing things, but even the best robotics could not match a human hand perfectly.

He still had not gotten used to going without spetsdods. Both the artificial and his real hand appeared incomplete without the weapons, and Sleel felt naked, even though he forced himself to forgo the dart guns. He had made a bad mistake, he had lost his client, and there was no way around it. He didn't want to call himself a matador anymore; he did not deserve the name.

The fake birds chirped, reacting to someone approaching along the path. Sleel looked up to see Kee Wu.

She wore sandals and shorts and a fluffy short-sleeved blouse, and seemed to be enjoying the warmth of the pretend-sunshine. Very nicely built, Kee Wu, and in another lifetime, Sleel would have been making an effort to play man/woman games with her. Not today.

"Sleel. "

'Kee. "

He stood.

"You don't have to leave," she said.

"Yeah, I do. I've been putting it off, but I have to call Reason's son and tell him about Jersey. He has a right to hear it from me. Just like you did about Mayli." Sleel shook his head. "Seems like I'm around a lot when good people die."

Kee Wu did not speak to this.

"So, I guess I'll go back to my room and put in a com to Solov. "

She blinked. "Solov? This man named his son `Solov'?"

"Yeah. I thought he had a weird sense of humor when I heard that, too."

She smiled and shook her head. "I hope I don't hang funny names on my children if I ever have any."

"I don't guess I'd have a Sleel Junior, either. See you later." Sleel left her there and went back to his room.

Solov Reason looked nothing like his father. The image on the holoproj was of a fifty-something man, thick and long dark hair shot full of gray, with a serious expression and a certain gravity to him. A good, upstanding citizen, to judge from his conservative PrimeSat gray suit and neck tattoos. Sleel knew that the look wasn't altogether accurate, because Solov had gotten into some trouble once that required Dirisha's help to get him out of. According to what he recalled, Reason's son now managed some kind of resort on the Great Barrier Reef on Earth.

Sleel had struggled through the explanation. When he managed to finish, Reason nodded, after a short time-lag. "Sounds as if he made his own choice, just as he always did. You've nothing to be sorry for."

"Excuse me? I let them kill him."

"Not if he could have escaped. You told him to, right?"

"Yes, but-"

"Sleel, my father was living on borrowed time. He knew it; he'd told me that more than once. He should have died before I was born, he cheated the Skull-and-Bones dozens of times. Every day was a gift, he used to say. If luck had looked the other way, he would have died at the age of twenty."

"A lot of people could say that," Sleel said.

"Perhaps. But a lot of people don't. My father made his peace with the cosmos a long time ago. He told me he would know when his number came up for recycling. Sure, he hired you to protect him, he wouldn't just roll over and die unless he knew it was time, but up on that hill with you, he accepted it."

"I can't."

"I can," Reason said. "My father lived a long and exciting time; he did nearly everything he wanted to do when he wanted to do it. He had family, money, a certain kind of fame, or maybe infamy. He was the best at what he chose to do. Not many can say that."

After Sleel broke the communication, he sat and stared at the wall. If Jersey's son had screamed and foamed and castigated him for failing to protect his father, Sleel would have felt better. That he had been calm and accepting did not go with Sleel's sense of shame. If Sleel had done his job, Jersey would still be breathing. Sure, the old geep should have taken off like he'd been told to do, probably he could have gotten away clean. But it never should have come to that. That was Sleel's fault. He'd been living that cock-of-thegalaxy facade for so long he'd halfway come to believe it. He had badly underestimated a deadly enemy and the mistake had been fatal for a man who had hired him to keep him alive. Hubris.

That was the bottom line, now, wasn't it? No way around that one. No way.

Kee Wu felt a coolness touch her as she sat in the ship's little park, as if a ghostly hand had brushed her spine. She turned, but there was no one else in sight. The sensation was one she had felt before, usually when she noticed she was being watched by someone. Riding a public trans or sometimes when she was working out in crowded places. Every now and then, she would get the cool tingle when she spotted a hidden surveillance camera. Odd that she should feel it now. Maybe there was a spycam set up to watch the park?

She stood and wandered, trying to look aimless, but could not see either an observer or a hidden camera.

After a few minutes the feeling abated, though it did not go away entirely. She shrugged it off. She was, she decided, being paranoid. There was no reason anybody should be watching her in particular, and if a surveillance eye happened to be focused on her, well, that was part of living in civilization.

She left the convoluted trail and went to find a restaurant.

The recording was excellent, Cierto noted, and he mentally added a bonus to the operative's pay. The woman sat in a small "outdoor" cafe on the starship, sipping at tea-the brand was included with the report-and having a light lunch. Some kind of fish, a vegetable salad, bread.

She knew she was being watched.

As Cierto replayed the recording for the third time, he looked for the moment again. There, in the park, as she sat upon the bench listening to the birds and insects, there had come a moment of . . . awareness.

Very subtle; she didn't leap up and begin digging through the shrubbery for a watcher, but she knew, even though she had given but the slightest sign. He had missed it on the first playing, caught it on the second, and now confirmed it to himself on the third viewing.

Cierto leaned back in the form-chair and smiled. Wonderful. Truly a dangerous opponent, this woman.

Of course, he had known that already; this merely confirmed it. The years had not made her duller, but had sharpened her edges. Ah, but such a woman would be perfect once she had been conquered. The winning of her would not be easy, but that made the victory plunge all that much sweeter, did it not?

And the House of Black Steel did not ask for ease, but for challenge.

The operative's report indicated that the wounded matador, still healing, traveled with Fem Kildee Wu as she returned to Koji. That caused a frown to flit across Cierto's features. Why? Surely a woman like Wu could not be attracted to a man who had proven himself as inept as this matador. Perhaps it was pity. Or was it something else? Cierto had other operatives poking into Wu's and this man Sleel's pasts, and if there was some other connection between them, it would be uncovered in due course. Meanwhile, he would not concern himself overly with this development. This Sleel had even stopped carrying his weapons, and certainly his spirit had been broken on that rocky hill where Cierto had beaten him. He had seen it before; brave men made cowards when they had been thoroughly overcome. He had done it to others himself often enough when he had walked the Flex

He frowned. There were some bad memories that way, too. But that was long ago, and much had changed since.

Now Cierto chuckled to himself. A man was allowed to be young and stupid, and were he lucky, he would survive to become older and wiser. He had done both. More, he had learned patience. There was no hurry in any of this. Some dishes were better eaten cold, and one had to wait for the temperature to drop before dining. When he took his pleasure with Kildee Wu, it would be at the proper moment; nothing less would serve.

After all, she was to be the mother of his son, and such a thing must be perfect.

It had been a long time since Sleel had been to Koji. He didn't remember much about it; his visit had been short, part of his research for one of Gerard Repe's books. He knew that Shtotsanto, the Holy City, was where Emile's teacher Pen had been recruited by the prerevolutionaries setting themselves up against the Confed. But that was history. Sleel wasn't sure why he had agreed to come here with Kee Wu. It was probably because he didn't have anywhere else to go. He had learned that old literary lesson well enough: You couldn't go home again. If there had been any doubts after seeing where he had grown up, they had been erased.

His parents had not come to see him while he was in the medical center. He hadn't really expected them to do so, but down deep had been a glimmer of hope that they would. That hope had been snuffed.

Maybe for good this time.

"This way," Kee said.

There were churches, kloysters, temples, synagogues, zendos, kyrkas and other houses of religion that Sleel did not recognize, all scattered through the port city as thick as slot machines in a gambling town.

The rental flitter took him and Kee Wu through the port and into the outskirts of the place, then across a patch of empty woods and rolling farmland. Night came, and the lights of civilization were thin. Sleel stared through the window at the darkness, staying quiet, watching but not really seeing. He found himself nodding off, but it seemed too much effort to keep awake.

Wu watched Sleel sleep as they drew nearer her dojo. They had left Rakkaus three hours ago, the programmed flitter would have them in Kyrktorn in a few minutes. The village was small enough so there was not much of a pool of potential students there. Wu wanted those who sought to study with her to have to overcome a few obstacles before they ever stepped into her dojo. There was no listing for it on the comlink and she did not advertise. To find and get to her were hardly major chores, but few people wandered in accidentally. Those who came through her doors generally did so because they were seeking what she offered and had done some research to locate it. Not much of an entrance exam, but it screened out the merely curious.

Sleel slept, his forehead pressed against the flitter's window, oblivious to the sometimes bumpy ride.

Now, why had she brought him with her? He was sunk in the depths of self-pity and such a thing did not move her. True, he had been with Mayli when she had died, but Kee Wu did not live in the past to the extent that she had made her sister into a saint to be worshipped. He and she had a mutual enemy, but that in itself was hardly enough. So, why?

She watched the plastic window fog with his expelled breath, clearing between exhalations. Why did she burden herself with this man? The reason danced outside her reasoning mind, a shadow against the darkness, enough that she was aware of it but not enough that she could tell what it was. That would have to do for now. Just as she had learned to sense a sword cut coming at her when sometimes she could not actually see it, there was about this man some sense of something that had made her realize he was important to her.

The flitter slowed. The dojo was just ahead, the village mostly asleep at this hour, early though it was.

"Sleek" she said softly.

He came awake instantly, no sleep fog in his eyes when he looked at her. He knew where he was, she saw; there was no disorientation. Also in that moment she saw a depth she had not seen in him before.

The moment passed.

"We're here."

His lips set tight, and he gave her a short nod. "Okay."

Was this a mistake? Should she have taken on this crippled man? Well, she guessed she would find out.

Chapter SEVENTEEN

THE EARLY SPRING night was only a little chilly, not enough for a jacket or heat threads. Sleel's breath hardly fogged the air as he walked along the quiet street. It was late, nearly midnight, and save for a few people exercising themselves or their pets, he was mostly alone. Kyrktom was a small town, maybe ten thousand people altogether, and the majority of residents apparently went to bed early, which suited Sleel.

There were sufficient street lights so that it was the darkness that seemed to pool here and there. This part of the town was mostly flat and residential, multiplexes and single- or double-family dwellings. The small yards had neatly trimmed ground cover, grasses or vines, with a fair number of assorted species of trees ranging from shrub-size to thirty meters or more high. Night birds peeped in a few of the taller trees. One of the birds had a cry that sounded like nothing so much as "Heyfool!" and Sleel wondered if some warped god had put the damned bird there for his personal benefit.

Sleel's boots sounded quite loud on the plastcrete walk. An occasional flitter fanned by, raising a little dust, its fans humming for a long way in the quiet.

In the weeks that he had been in Kee's village, he had spent a lot of time walking. At first it was to rehabilitate the knee, developing strength in the new muscles. The new hand was bare now, grown enough to be usable on its own without the glove, though not altogether full-sized. The eye was as good as it had ever been, probably better, since it was relatively unworn.

He was able to do the sumito pattern, and he did that a few times a week, but the walking had become his chief focus. He didn't keep track of it exactly, but he probably averaged twenty or twenty-five klicks a day. Rain or shine, cold or warm, Sleel walked, trying not to think, and failing at that most of the time.