The Friday Society (14 page)

She just stared at Nellie and Michiko, not able to articulate what she wanted to say. Not knowing what that was in the first place.

“Let’s get you some fresh air, then.” Nellie wrapped a protective arm around her shoulder and escorted her down the stairs and into the now-empty narrow street.

20

Three Girls and Three Men

N
ELLIE DIDN’T KNOW
Cora particularly well. This was because she’d only met her the night before, and you just couldn’t get to know a person that quickly. Like the Magician—it had been almost two years now and he’d still surprise her with a new story or a new talent. But she was good at reading people. It was her thing. And she knew that Cora was hurting. Bad.

The street air seemed to calm her a little bit, but Nellie knew a good walk would refresh the senses best. She led her friends back toward Lord White’s, a place she’d never been to but had ascertained the whereabouts of that afternoon.

“Uh,” said Nellie after they’d wandered out onto the empty high street. Though there couldn’t have been fewer people on the road than on the narrower streets they’d navigated, it seemed even more deserted because of its size and the lack of the usual daytime bustle. The fog today was yellower in hue than the night before, and the lamps glowed like little suns at equal intervals along the street. Little creepy suns.

“Did you say something?” asked Cora.

“Well, it don’t seem right to ask you for a favor . . .”

“Why not?”

“Well . . . uh . . .”

“What is it, Nellie?”

“You remember that bloke . . . the one in my sittin’ room . . .”

“The dead guy, yes.”

Nellie turned to examine Cora’s expression, but it didn’t flinch, so she continued. She explained the story from earlier that day, about the weird Dr. Mantis, and even mentioned the eyeballs, because they were particularly noteworthy. Then she brought up the checkbook and Mr. Carter.

“And I was thinkin’, seein’ as you seemed to know everyone at the party last night . . .”

“I could talk to him about it. I can’t see that being a problem.”

Nellie smiled. “Thanks.”

“What do you want?” It was Michiko from behind them, an edge to her voice.

“I say, that was a remarkably confident complete sentence there, Michiko,” said Cora, turning around, with Nellie following her half a moment after.

“Oh, bleedin’ hell,” said Nellie.

“’Allo girls.”

Three men, three stupidly large and quite ugly men, were grinning at them. Michiko had her hands on her hips, standing protectively before Cora and Nellie.

“Just leave us,” said Cora, in a tone of voice that Nellie understood to mean she was not in the mood for this.

The man in the middle with the muttonchops laughed, revealing a large gap where the front few of his teeth should be. Then he stopped suddenly. “No.”

The men moved closer, causing Nellie and Cora instinctively to step back, but Michiko stood steadfast, allowing Muttonchops to tower over her.

“What do you want?” she asked.

He stared at her for a moment, then gave a look to his buddies. “Well, seein’ as you asked . . . I’ll take them purses, and that there sword at yer hip. And then . . . we’ll see what else I want.”

“Sounds threatening,” said Cora. Nellie watched her as she reached into her purse.

She also saw Michiko kneel down on the cold street, her legs still quite wide apart, and the man before her take a stunned step backward.

“What the hell’s she doin’?” he asked.

“No idea,” replied Cora. Her hand appeared from within her purse, empty. “But I’d be just a little bit concerned.”

* * *

E
NTER EVERY DUEL
expecting to die.

That was hard in this case, since it was so clear she’d easily defeat them. They weren’t even worthy of fighting, really. If it weren’t for the need to protect the other two. The blonde and the brunette.

Stillness.

Calm.

Breathe.

Time to wake up the Silver Heart.

Michiko reached with lightning speed to her left side and pulled the hilt of the
katana
a notch, just a bit, just to let it know it was time. Then it was unsheathed, and she was back on her feet, holding it in both hands before her.

The three strange men looked a little taken aback at the sight of the Silver Heart. Michiko’s speed was impressive. She knew this. She could make it seem that the
katana
had materialized out of thin air in her hands.

They looked a bit like children to her, mouths agape, brains not quite up to speed with what had just happened. What was about to happen.

She would not kill them. Who kills children?

Her focus shifted, her mind clear.

First man. Second man. Third man. Like looking through a telescope, her focus examined each up close.

Okay.

She attacked.

* * *

T
HE MEN RAN
like wild creatures, holding tightly to their wounds, leaving a trail of blood behind them. If Michiko had been a hunting animal, they’d have been easy for her to stalk, thought Nellie. But there was nothing animal-like in the efficiency with which she’d disposed of her prey.

“One each,” said Michiko, turning to them with a small smile.

“One cut, you mean?” asked Nellie.

“Cut. Yes. Arm, arm, leg. Leg for leader. Bad man.”

So she’d reasoned the whole thing out, in so little time. In a blink of an eye, it had seemed. In the dark, Nellie had been able to discern very little of what Michiko had done, her black outfit a blur in the fog. Only the blade was clear to see, reflecting the light from the streetlamps, and then, even then, it had seemed she’d made only one move, not three.

“Thank you,” said Cora, staring at Michiko with the same awe that Nellie felt.

Michiko nodded.

The silence now was awkward, and then Nellie started to giggle. She couldn’t help herself. It was nervous energy combined with the awesomeness she’d just seen.

Cora grinned, too, despite everything she’d been through that night.

Michiko furrowed her brow.

“I think it’s time maybe for us to be gettin’ on home,” said Nellie, calming herself.

Cora nodded, and Michiko, who seemed to understand the word
home,
sighed a little sadly, it seemed.

“Everyone comfortable being on their own?” asked Cora in her take-charge kind of voice. “By which I, of course, mean Nellie. Michiko, I think you’ll be just fine.”

“I’m good. I coulda’ taken them, if Michiko hadn’t.” Nellie wasn’t entirely certain she spoke the truth, but she’d done okay with the creepy eyeball man, and then there was the footman from the other night. Besides, worse came to worst, no one was better at disappearing than she was. “How about you, though?”

Cora shrugged and produced a tiny gun from her purse. “I’m good.”

They made their final farewells.

And then they were off.

* * *

T
HREE GIRLS INTO
the night.

PART THREE

Investigations

21

A Lesson

T
HERE WAS NO
light to wake Michiko the next morning.

No physical signal that her body was rested and ready to face a new day.

There was, however, a knock on the tiny window next to her bed, the window that she’d never been able to wrench open.

“
What?”
Michiko pushed herself off her bed, her neck crying out in pain because she had slept on the right side of her face the whole night. Still half asleep, it took her a moment to figure out that the sound was, in fact, coming from her window. But the second she found the source of the noise, she was wide-awake.

Hayao’s upside-down face was staring at her. He wore a big smile, and when she finally saw him, he waved happily.

Oh, for crying out loud.
Michiko got out of bed and went to the window. Of course, the thought that he was dangling from a roof five stories above the street had occurred to her, but she wasn’t too surprised by this fact. His athleticism was, after all, what had impressed her about him. Exactly this monkey business . . .

“
What do you want?”
she asked loudly from behind the glass, for once happy that Callum made her sleep all the way up in the servants’ quarters and far away from him.

“It’s time for lessons,”
he said back.

Michiko scoffed at this.
“You’re not the one who gets to choose when we learn, little monkey.”

“I just thought you’d probably be busy later, and—”

“What time is it?”

“Five.”

Michiko was suddenly exhausted. Back when she was studying in Japan, early mornings were a regular part of her day, but early nights were common as well. And she’d spent the better part of last night first carting a dead girl around the city, and then, upon parting ways with those very strange and giggly girls, stalking some fog man who never materialized.

Still, she wasn’t going to let monkey boy out-energize her.

“Fine. Go to the garden. Wait for me. Sit . . . still.”

Hayao nodded vigorously and disappeared back onto the roof.

She didn’t hurry to meet him. Patience was going to be one of the more important lessons for monkey boy. So she took her time dressing in her all-black training gear, thinking that, really, she’d only just removed it a few hours earlier.

Why had she agreed to this, again?

Then she lightly made her way down two flights of stairs in the pitch darkness to the second floor, where all the weapons were stored. She took stock of the shoddy choices available to her and decided on two gentleman’s canes. She closed the cabinet quietly and had a look at Callum’s physical therapy equipment, lit by the lamp in the street whose light filtered through the tall windows that ran along the far wall. The various devices looked unnatural and the stuff of horror stories to her, but Callum’s patients paid good money to be treated with them. Evidently he could ease their pains. Renew their bodies.

It made little sense to her.

She’d wasted enough time. Hopefully the boy had left in impatience, but she doubted it. He was determined, that one. After all, he’d had no idea where she slept, so he had probably spent a good long while investigating every window of the house to find her.

She sighed. Time to go outside.

* * *

T
HE COMMUNAL GARDEN
that filled the square between the two narrow streets was locked from nine at night until eight in the morning. A high, wrought-iron fence with spikes at the top was enough to enforce the rule. For most people. For someone like Michiko and, she had no doubt, Hayao, such fortifications were little more than a closed door, a slight obstacle that had to be contended with for a moment and then overcome.

Scaling the fence was nothing for her, and she was quickly concealed from the street in a leafy cover. Michiko had to admit that the garden was pretty nice, a flash of green in the general gloom of the dark, gray neighborhood. Trees and hedges blocked the open space in the middle from preying eyes, and small flower gardens lined the green from one end to the other, all merging under a bubbling birdbath fountain.

Hayao was sitting cross-legged right in the center of the green. His eyes were closed, and clearly he’d taken her instruction to wait for her quite literally. She approached him in silence and took a moment to observe him.

Then she struck him on the shoulder with a cane.

“Ow!”
Hayao flinched and opened his eyes wide.

“Why did you react?”
asked Michiko, circling around him to the other side.

“Because you hit me.”

“So?”

“It hurt.”

“So?”

“It surprised me.”

“So?”

Hayao stopped talking.

Michiko started.

“You feel pain. You feel surprise. An unexpected moment happened and you reacted. But why? We can feel, we can think, we can react without having to share this information. Discipline and control allow the samurai to internalize every moment. Distraction can be deadly.

“Distraction is one of the samurai’s deadliest weapons. We yell when we attack. We wear our masks to strike fear in the hearts of our enemies. We hit you on the left so we may cut you on the right. Do you know of the story of the samurai who sat for four hours waiting for the sun to rise? Did your old master tell you that one?”

Hayao didn’t respond.

Michiko smiled. Okay, this was kind of fun.
“You may answer.”

“He chose his position so that when the sun rose, it would be in his opponent’s eyes,”
replied Hayao quickly.

“Yes. An example of using distraction to defeat one’s enemy. Also an example of patience. Both are your lessons for this morning. For the next hour you will stay here and sit. You will keep your eyes open and observe the world around you. Your breathing will be slow and measured. Your thoughts will flow in and out of your mind like water, for a sticking thought can be as distracting as a physical threat. You will not lose focus. You will stay centered. Understand?”

Hayao gave a little nod, then furrowed his brow in concentration. Michiko smacked the back of his head.
“Relaxed focus. Your body should be calm, but alert. Not tight. Tight does not win. Tight causes muscles to pull and tear.”

Hayao’s brow slowly released. And Michiko nodded.

For the next hour Hayao did his best to follow Michiko’s instructions as she practiced different
katas
with the two canes. Once in a while a cane would find its way to Hayao’s leg or hand or arm, a short sharp tap. The boy couldn’t seem to prevent himself from flinching. He would learn.

Finally the sun rose, and though the leaves sheltered Hayao from its full brightness, the moment wasn’t lost on him. He didn’t squint. He smiled.

“No,”
said Michiko quietly. He immediately stopped.
“Not being distracted by the sun this morning is good. But you were still distracted by the memory of the story.”

With that, the lesson was over. She had to get back to the house before Callum discovered her absence. The last morning she had been lucky. He had not come home until lunchtime. Where he’d spent the night she didn’t know and didn’t care. But she suspected one of his many female admirers had something to do with it. She’d been spared the beating she otherwise would have received had he learned that she hadn’t come home that night herself.

But he had been asleep in his luxurious four-poster bed when she’d sneaked out last night, and he’d be awake soon. They had a day trip to Cambridge where they were scheduled to give a demonstration in front of an assembly of college students.

“Come back tomorrow morning. Same time. We shall meet here again,”
instructed Michiko.

“But what about my lesson to you?”

“What?”

“My running.”

Of course. She’d nearly forgotten. And she did want to learn. It would help her so much in seeking out the fog man if she could run along the rooftops instead of navigating narrow streets. She’d intended to go out again that night in her quest, not studying a new skill. But sometimes taking the time to learn, though a seeming step back, could help move a person forward more quickly.

“Tonight.”

Hayao smiled and then he turned and bounded up and over the garden fence, using a tree to propel himself upward.

Little monkey.