Shallows of Night - 02 (22 page)

Deep within the jungle of the city, the kubaru runner stumbled and fell and the ricksha jerked to a halt. Although he had been talking to Matsu and his head had been turned away, the bright line of crimson along the runner’s side caught the periphery of his vision and as the two men leaped onto the still rocking ricksha his sword was already withdrawn.

It was the wrong action in the confined space and the man who went for him had the advantage, the hilt of his filmy dirk slamming against the inside of Ronin’s wrist with a quick flick, the sword clattering to the muddy street. A professional, Ronin thought, and he did the only thing he could do, grappling, tearing the momentum so that they both fell to the ground.

He inhaled the stench of the body and the foulness of the breath as the man slashed the dirk at his throat. Saw the yellowed stumps of teeth, holes in the gray gums, images flashing across his vision path as the head whipped and the shoulders twisted and the blade blurred into the soft earth just past his neck.

Elbows in and up, using the heavy bone structure, and the man’s jaws clashed together with a crack as Ronin hit him. He had the good sense to scramble away then so that he could regain his advantage.

He let Ronin get up before he came toward him, confident because Ronin was unarmed. He was small but very powerful with broad shoulders and lean hips and thick muscular arms. He had a wide, flat, intelligent face, dark cunning eyes. He was bald save for a long queue of dirty blue-black hair. He was missing an ear.

He was clever and ignorant at the same time. He feinted, the blade of his dirk appearing to whip toward Ronin’s neck, canting downward at the last instant, reaching to slit his stomach. Using the man’s momentum, Ronin stepped into the thrust, grasping the extended arm, and leaned back, his hip and groin beneath the man’s buttocks, a solid base as he planted his feet and stiffened the muscles of his legs. He lifted his right foot, slamming the sole of his boot down onto the stretched knee joint. Resistance was minimal. The kneecap shattered in a shower of white and pink and the vulnerable thighbone cracked as if it were a dry twig. The man screamed and collapsed and Ronin reached for his fallen dirk.

“Stop right there,” said a voice.

Ronin turned and in that instant remembered the second man. He stood now several paces from Ronin with Matsu drawn to his side, his dirk at her throbbing white throat, so perfect, like ivory. The blade grazed her windpipe for emphasis. He stared into her eyes, saw in their darkness no fear. What then?

The second man shook his head sadly.

“You should not have done that.” He was large, very tall, with a grizzled beard and long greasy hair. He had a high forehead and the eyes of an animal. Ronin froze. “What shall I tell his woman and her children? How will they eat? Now I will take your money and the woman.” His feral eyes flicked at the man, broken and unconscious in the muddy earth, came back to Ronin. “She will fetch a high price at the Sharida.” Matsu gasped in pain as the blade bit into her throat.

“Sharida?” said Ronin, edging closer, wanting to keep the man talking.

“Outlander. Fool to travel these streets in a ricksha. The scent of your money precedes you.” He smiled mockingly. “Yet I salute your foolishness because you are my living. Long may it last. Do not come closer,” he snapped suddenly. His voice was now cold and hard. “The woman will be breathing through the hole in her throat. You are not that foolish, I trust.” The man pulled Matsu in front of him and his blade caught the sunlight in a dazzle. “Now come, let us not drag out this encounter. Toss your money to the ground.”

“All right,” said Ronin. “Do not harm her.” Because he was close enough now and Matsu was in the correct position. He had deliberately moved because he wanted her in front of the man, where he could look at her, read her expression. He needed that advantage. His sword was out of the question. She would die before he got halfway to where it lay.

His shoulders moved minutely, slumping in an attitude of defeat. Back within the depths of the Freehold and his Senseii, the Salamander was before him, saying, “Provide your foe with clues. He will be trained to look for the key to victory through the tiny betrayals of your body. So you must give him that which he wishes to find.” These men were sufficiently adept.

His hands were at his belt, slowly unknotting the cord to his bag of coins. He stared at Matsu and she read what he wished her to know, written in his colorless eyes.

The bag hit the soft ground with a heavy chink and the gauntleted hand sped across the short space without warning. The hesitation, the merest split instant caused by Ronin’s attitude of defeat and the visual and aural distraction of the bag of coins dropping, was sufficient. Ronin grasped the blade just as it commenced its inward stroke. He wrenched at it and the metal snapped. At the same time, Matsu twisted her body, swung her arm, and her fist hit his stomach. Then she was away and Ronin was closing with the man.

He went for the throat and the man blocked him, turning as he did so, taking Ronin down. There was pressure against Ronin’s windpipe and he had to force his breathing. The man’s fist smashed into the side of his head and the grip tightened on his throat. He felt the urge to retch as his body rapidly used up the last of the oxygen in his stilled lungs. He fought to breathe, could not, and so turned his attention to bringing up his right hand. It was caught between their bodies and he worked at freeing it while he began to strangle on carbon dioxide. The man’s attention narrowed as he increased the pressure and now the hand was free; bring it up, through the maze. Groping, he found the open spot on the side of the neck, jabbed with his thumb.

The man could not even scream and Ronin was up, his lungs heaving in great bursts of air. They were on their knees in the mud and slime and the man was recovering and there was no time to reconsider, the organism out to survive. Ronin’s fist, sealed within the hide of the Makkon gauntlet, smashed into the lower end of the man’s sternum. The bone cracked, splintered, the force of the fist plunging it upward into the heart. Blood and viscera fountained outward, drenching him as the face before him, drained and white, bobbed like a berserk marionette. The jaws snapped shut spasmodically, biting off the end of the lolling tongue.

Ronin stood and kicked at the body, looking around, but there was only Matsu staring at the ruined corpse.

She started then, looking at him. She went and got his sword and he sheathed it as she bent to pick up the bag of coins. Then she went to the slain kubaru and ripped off his damp shirt, returning to Ronin and wiping the pink foam from his face and chest and arms. She reached out and touched the strange scaled gauntlet, horny and unreflective, glistening now, beaded with dark fluids.

“What is that?” she whispered, stroking the hide.

“A present,” Ronin said, watching the thin line of red across her throat where the dirk had crossed the delicate flesh. It stood out like a tear on a shadowed cheek. He licked his finger, wiped it along her neck. Her eyes closed and she shuddered. “It was given to me by a little man who walks with a limp, whose companion is a singular creature. It is made from the claw of the thing that killed Sa.”

She seemed not to hear him. “I could not believe that any man could do what you have just done. Was it the gauntlet?” Her fingers dark now with the viscous liquids.

Ronin wiped her hand and the gauntlet on the sodden shirt, then threw it from him. He shrugged. “Perhaps, in part.” He reached for her. “Now we must finish our journey. The Council awaits me.”

The dark eyes lifted, looked at him strangely. Then she nodded and they set off through the labyrinthine streets, finding at length the Nanking and then, a short time later, a narrow winding road with no name that Ronin could see.

“I came a different way the last time.”

“I have no doubt. But it is not prudent to take King Knife Street, is this not so?”

He laughed then. “Yes, Matsu, it would indeed not be wise. But what about the Greens at the gate?”

She smiled. “There are many entrances to the walled city.”

The climb was steep this way. No houses lay along the road, only giant firs and lush green-leafed trees. The earth was thick with small plants and wild flowering bushes.

Soon the shadow of the great wall blotted out the warmth of the sun and they stood in the cool dimness while Matsu spoke in low tones to the Greens who guarded this gate. The metal door swung open and they went through. The Greens ignored them, returning to the absorption of their dice game.

Within the perfectly linear corridor of the carefully tended trees he asked her, “The Sharida, Matsu. What is it?”

She laughed nervously, the sound like shattering crystal in the quietude, and he heard the sighing of the trees before she said, “The Sharida is a tale told to frighten outlanders.” But he saw the look on her face and did not quite believe her.

“Tell me then,” he said lightly. “I am not easily frightened.”

Her eyes swept his face and she tried a smile but did not quite make it.

“It is a market, a special kind of market, which, it is said, moves from night to night, through the black alleyways of Sha’angh’sei, opening only after the moon has left the sky.”

“A flesh market,” said Ronin. “Slave trade.”

She shook her head. “No. There are many of those in the city. They conduct their business during the day.”

“Well then?”

“It is true that the Sharida deals in human flesh, but only the most beautiful women and men, young and healthy.”

“Toward what end?”

They walked in silence for a time. The cicadas were singing among the trees and birds called in staccato rhythm above their heads. The avenue stretched before them, white and empty, as if it were some giant’s plaything abandoned now for some newer and more elaborate toy.

“Toward, it is said, a hideous death.” Her voice was like the first touch of autumn’s winds. “The buyers wish only to observe death and the act of dying, and the more they indulge themselves, the more bored they become and the more monstrous the forms of dying they conjure up.” She looked at him. “Even in a city such as this, such a thing does not seem possible.”

“It is only a tale.”

“Yes,” she said. “That is all.”

Their footsteps shattered the silence of the hall and the still air eddied softly in their wake. The woman with the light eyes and jutting breasts was at her post behind the heavy marble desk. Two Greens, armed with axes and curving dirks, stood watch outside heavy wooden doors with iron rings in their centers.

“Yes?” she inquired, lifting her head. She did not seem to recognize Ronin. He was about to say something when Matsu squeezed his arm.

She spoke to the woman who said, “Ah,” softly as she listened, her eyes on Ronin.

“Ah.” Her lacquered nails scraping across the cool desk top like articulated insects. “No, I am afraid—” But Matsu cut into her prepared speech and they stared at each other now, a test of power that encompassed more than mere wills. The woman licked her lips with her bright tongue. “Well, I—” Matsu spoke at length and the woman’s face came apart, a subtle thing which he observed with some wonderment. “Yes. Yes, of course.” She signaled to the Greens who turned and, pulling on the iron rings, opened the doors.

At last, Ronin thought, as they went forward. An audience with the Municipal Council of Sha’angh’sei. They went into the Council chambers. He was already unscrewing the hilt of the sword. An answer to the long riddle. An end to the uncertainty. The way now open to defeat The Dolman and his hordes. The doors closed behind them. His hand stopped as it was about to pull forth me scroll of dor-Sefrith.

He whirled on Matsu.

“What insane jest is this?”

“There is no jest.” Calm. The black eyes steady.

“Then surely this is the wrong chamber.”

“You can see for yourself that this is the Council’s chambers.”

It was a high-ceilinged, windowless room dominated by an immense ornate table around which were placed at regular intervals high-backed wooden chairs, richly carved, regal. Save for the two of these, the chamber was empty.

“Why did you bring me on a day when the Council is not in session?” he demanded.

“If it were not in session, the building would have been closed.”

Ronin’s temper broke and he shook her by the shoulders.

“Are they ghosts then that I cannot see them?”

“No.” The voice as distinct in the room as a bird call in high summer. “It is quite simple.”

His hands moved. “Matsu, I will break your neck—”

“The Municipal Council of Sha’angh’sei does not exist.”

The dragon stared at him quizzically. From the chair, its golden eyes sparked in the last oblique rays of sunlight. Its head was erect but its body was distorted, foreshortened by the folds. Ronin crossed the room and, removing his shirt and weapons belt, donned the robe as Matsu had bidden him. The silk moved in the breeze from the open window and the dragons writhed.

Day was almost done. They had not spoken on the journey back to Tenchō. Although he had been hungry and although they had passed many street stalls filled with a variety of fragrant foods, he had denied himself that pleasure, preferring not to delay the explanation. He had spent too long seeking an answer only to find other riddles.

He had raged at Matsu, threatening to tear the chambers apart, to destroy the Greens outside the door. She had merely stared at him and asked that he return to Tenchō with her. “The answer is there,” was all that she had said and had waited him out

Eventually he had given in. He had no choice.

Clouds were piling up to the west, darkening the lowering sun, turning it from orange to deep crimson, a half-seen oblate, bloated and veiled by the oncoming weather. Another storm approaches, Ronin thought, sliding the dragons over his torso. The silk felt cool on his flesh.

Matsu came to him beside the window and tied his sash in the formal manner. She had changed into a crimson formal robe, the color more vivid than was usual for her. Deep brown reeds on the body, the wide sleeves plain, bordered in deep red.