Black Steel (30 page)

Cierto activated the vox circuit on his security comp. "Close the courtyard roof!"

The man would play the Devil and all his demons getting into the casa once it was zipped up. There were guards out there, a dozen or so of them, plus a score of students in the casa. One man, no matter how adept, could not defeat that many on his own.

The outside cameras scanned, looking for the attacker.

An airbike went zipping past, a black woman perched on it dressed in the uniform of the matadors, firing a long gun.

Ah. So the one called Sleel had help. How many?

Cierto activated the house broadcaster. "To arms! We are under attack! All students draw swords!" Then he grabbed his own sword and ran from the control room. He would go and see for himself. He was no backline general to direct his troops from the rear.

"Going to be a little tight," Bork said, as the flitter dropped toward the courtyard. The little vehicle fell like a fat stone in heavy gee toward the narrowing gap. The roof was three-quarters shut and closing quickly as the flitter dived for the opening.

The understruts of the flitter scraped the moving edge of the roof as the little craft skinned through. A few millimeters thicker and they would have been snagged.

Sleel let out his held breath. "Damn, Bork."

"There's a nice window," Bork said. He pulled the flitter up just before it touched the top of a large evergreen topiary ball and headed for a wide expanse of what Sleel hoped was clear plastic or thincris.

"Hang on," Bork said. He killed the power.

The flitter's nose smashed into the window. Plastic. The material shattered and the flitter slid to a halt, knocking over a potted plant and a couch in the room beyond the window, digging a deep furrow in the rug and floor.

"And we'd like to thank you for flying Bork Transportation," the big man said. "Come again real soon."

The two of them scrabbled out of the flitter. "I got the east side," Bork said.

"Call if you see her," Sleel said.

"You got it, boss."

Sleel ran through the hallway toward Cierto's security control. According to the schematic he'd studied, it should be just around the next-ah. Company.

Two young men with swords stood in the hallway. They saw Sleel and turned to face him.

Steel had stuck his and Kee's swords into his sash. He thumbed the catch on his weapon and suddenly his other hand grew a black razored finger. He wasn't even aware of the draw; one second it was in the sheath, the next it was just there.

The first one came at him high. Sleel ducked under the slash and skewered the man's heart, driving his sword's point up under the sternum, then spinning away.

The second one leaped back, but Sleel's twirl brought the edge of his sword across the man's throat in a cut that ran nearly the length of the blade. The startled man dropped his own weapon and clutched at the gaping wound in his neck.

His new sword was blooded.

Sleel darted into the control room.

Kee! On the holoproj screens marked "Gym."

Sleel paused for a second. He put his sword down, picked up the keyboard control and broke it in half, over his right knee. The holoproj images scrammed and turned into balls of swirling blue lint. Sleel picked up a chair and used it as a mallet, smashing everything he could reach. Climate controls, house electronics, com systems, whatever. That ought to give them something to think about.

As he ran toward the gym, he triggered his dentcom.

"Bork?"

Bork's reply was, "Lemme call you back, I'm kinda busy here. "

"Dirisha? Geneva? You two okay?"

"Hey, Sleel," Dirisha came back. "It's like swatting drunk flies. I'm surprised these guy can find their dicks to go pee. We've darted nine-"

"-make that ten," Geneva cut in.

"-ten of them," Dirisha said. "You need any help, we can get there; the front door just kicked open."

"Yeah, I killed the security board," Sleel said. "So far we're going okay. Aren't we, Bork?"

"Yeah, sorry I couldn't talk a second ago, there were four guys waving swords at me. I had to shoot pretty fast."

"I'm on my way to the gym; that's where Kee is."

"We'll keep the pot stirred so nothing burns," Dirisha said. "Hurry up, though. We're getting rained on out here."

Sleel ran.

The gym door was still locked and the electronic controls were shorted out, but there was a manual release. Sleel pulled the mechanical handle and the worm gear disengaged, popping the door backward on its track enough so he could shove it open.

Kee was inside crouched defensively. She raised from her stance. "About time," she said.

He pulled her sword from his sash and tossed it to her. "I brought you a present. You forgot it when you left home."

"Thanks."

"And look what our friendly old balloo Bergamo made for me." Sleel waved his own bared sword.

"Nice. "

"Let's leave. This party is getting too raucous for my taste."

He started for the door. "Oops. Company!"

Sleel backed away from the entrance. People were rushing down the hall from both directions, nine or ten of them. "There another way out?"

"Not that we can use."

Sleel and Kee backed farther away from the gym's exit.

The students began to pour into the room. Nine of them, all bearing swords.

"Don't attack!" came a command from behind the influx of students. Cierto.

He entered the room, his own sword held ready.

"Your luck has just run out, matador. Ready yourself for death."

"Through me first," Kee said, sliding in between Sleel and Cierto.

"Move!" both men said together.

"I don't want to damage you," Cierto said. "Not yet."

"Not your choice, "' she said. "I have a blade. If you don't kill me, I sure as hell will kill you."

Cierto stood still, apparently considering it. "Very well." He pointed his sword at Sleel. "Slay him."

The students had obviously not practiced a mass attack with this many against one before. They got in each other's way as they jockeyed to -move in on Sleel. That there were nine of them in a small space was to Sleel's advantage. He moved to his left and several of them smacked into one another trying to shift to cover him.

Sleel leaped at the crowd.

Wu had time to see Sleel wade into the mob, sword whirling, before Cierto focused on her. Likely he did not call what he did zanshin, nor the place where his soul went the Void, but the effect was the same.

She barely had time to make the shift herself to meet his charge.

Cierto would not try to play with this woman; he had seen her work, and she was too dangerous to risk anything less than full effort. He became his sword, and all else faded as he went to cut her down. It would be the fight of his lifetime and much as he wanted a son, there were other women who could bear him one. She had chosen to die. So be it.

Sleel felt the stretching of Chronos begin again, but this time he was faster than his opponents. He cut at them as though they were sword dummies put there for him to practice upon. They moved, but were mired in the thick air, and it was his weapon that found its targets and not theirs. Even as he danced through them unharmed, Sleel realized that this was still not the place of no-mind of which Kee had told him. He was aware, but still able to be distracted by the clink of Kee's sword against Cierto's.

He glanced that way, barely avoiding being stabbed as a result, and hastily returned his attention to the task at hand.

Move fast or die, Sleel!

Cierto cut and Wu blocked-she riposted with a stab for his face-he parried and tried a backhanded sweep-but he missed when she scooted back-then she thrust for his belly, only-

-he blocked it down and reversed his edge for an uppercut, but-

-she slapped his blade aside with the flat of her own and slashed at his exposed leg-

-missing by a hair when he dodged left and switched hands for a cut at her eyes-

-and she blocked and leaped back as he also hopped away.

Five seconds had elapsed since his first cut.

Wu stepped in and faked a cut to his head, turning it into a looping slice for his ankle-

-which he vaulted over, extending his own slightly longer weapon to pierce her throat, but-

-she parried and thrust for his chest, but-

-was met by his stop-thrust, that tangled his guard with her tsuba as both leaped to their right, breaking the connection.,

Nine seconds had passed.

They both leaped again in-

Six of Sleel's attackers were dead or wounded badly enough to be out of action. The other three had survived by staying away. One turned and ran for the exit as Sleel started for her. The other two split and tried to get behind him, but he twisted in time to jam his sword out low. One of the pair tripped over the extended blade. The other one lunged, but his fallen companion got in his way.

Sleel dropped and chopped down at the one on the ground, catching him across the back of the head. It made a sound like somebody hitting a ship's hawser with a heavy board. Sleel had to pry the sword up from the nearly bisected brainpan.

Sleel jumped over the latest dead man and brought his sword up over his head as if he were going to try a body-sputter stroke. The attacker jerked his sword up in a horizontal block, and Sleel twisted under it and kicked the man in the solar plexus, stealing his breath. The man sagged, and Sleel sidekicked him again, knocking him sprawling.

He turned to see how Kee was doing.

Cierto lunged and tried a five-move combination, cut, cut, slash from the right, stab, lunge from the groin-Kee backed away, blocking and parrying, stopping all five strikes, then offering a combination of her own, lunge, high and low extensions, figure-eight slashes, .an uppercut rising from the floor-Cierto dodged or blocked or danced away.

The two of them spun away and stood facing each other across five meters of what had become a very bloody floor, none of it theirs.

"We . . . are . . . evenly matched," Cierto said, amazement in his voice.

"Yes," Wu said, as amazed as her opponent. Though she was still in the Void, it relaxed its hold on her.

"My turn," Sleel said from behind her.

"No," she said. She didn't try to look at him.

"I'm not asking you. Move."

He came to stand next to her, and now she did glance at him. There was a new tone in his voice, something she hadn't heard from him before. It threw her. For a moment, her concentration was broken.

The Void let her go.

Instantly Cierto felt it. He charged.

Wu reached again for zanshin, knowing it was too late.

She had lost her Edge, Cierto saw. And the matador, for all his skill, did not have the Edge at all.

Now he would kill them both!

Sleel saw the man coming to hurt the woman he loved.

In that overstretched strand of time, so thin that it was almost beyond measure, Sleel understood that what he felt for Kee was indeed love. A thing for which he had known the words but never the feelings.

He had hidden it for months from himself, denied that it existed, pretended to blindness. He had refused to allow it into his soul, but now that he saw it, touched and tasted and smelled and felt it, there was no way he could ever keep it out again. Amazing how one man could harbor so much stupidity, so much ignorance, so much fear. And now it was gone, replaced with a new awareness.

And with the awareness of love came too the awareness of everything else.

Sleel discovered the Void and it embraced him.

Wu prepared for her end, knowing she had less than a second to manage it.

Death came for her-

Sleel blurred past. Razored black steel clashed against an equally keen black steel cousin, and cried like a bell.

Death stopped: his curse rose over the war song of hard metal: "Dios-!"

His face very nearly touching Cierto's, Steel drew himself up suddenly and snapped his blade down with a speed Wu had never seen matched. It was inhumanly quick. The edge of Sleel's sword caught Cierto across the right wrist-and cut through as if the flesh and bone were no more than a thin twig left too long in the sun.

Cierto screamed as his hand, still holding the sword, fell to the floor. He clutched at the spouting stump of his wrist and screamed again, falling to his knees.

Sleel raised his sword and looked at the wounded man.

Eons ran past, entropy enfolded the cosmos, the heat death of the Universe came and went.

Sleel shook his head and lowered his weapon as Cierto fell onto his side, his blood pumping in, small spurts onto the gym floor.

Sleel moved toward Kee, turning his back on Cierto.

"You okay?"

She nodded. "Welcome home," she said. "Now you understand."

"Yes. "

Cierto came up from the floor, his sword now clutched in his remaining hand, his face contorted in madness.

"Steel!" she yelled, lunging past him.

The point of Wu's weapon pierced Cierto's left eye, and his momentum carried him forward enough so that the end of the sword exited from the back of his head.

Her warning was unnecessary. Wu looked over to see that Sleel had also spun and driven his blade into Cierto, hard enough so that the tsuba pressed against the startled man's breast, most of the sword going through Cierto's torso.

It was a still holograph, a picture frozen motionless, breaths caught and held.

Cierto started to fall, and both Wu and Sleel pulled their swords free.

The man wore a puzzled frown. "You . . ." he began, never to finish. Instead, the Master of the House of Black Steel collapsed for the final time. And died.

Chapter THIRTY

"IT'S QUIET OUT here," Dirisha said.

Sleel looked at the bodies on the gym floor, then at Kee. He, triggered his dentcom and responded. "In here too," he said.

Bork arrived and looked around inside. "Man," he said.

Sleel looked back at Kee. "Listen," he began, "listen, there's something I need to say."

She looked at him, not speaking.

"I-I love you."

Her smile would have shamed the full moon for brightness. "Oh, I know that."