Chapter Twelve
The mobs were out in Mugenjou's streets and corridors, driven by some instinct for danger. The hallways seethed with impromptu gatherings, spur-of-the-moment doomsayers, and gangs making the best of the situation by indulging in a little looting, or just swaggering to keep up their own spirits.
None of them tried to impede Juubei and Kazuki. As the two of them passed, thugs found something else to do, sober citizens decided that they'd rather be indoors, and drunkards abruptly sobered up.
Kazuki would have found it all rather charming, if he'd had the spare attention to notice it.
"You're catching up." Static warped Makubex's voice, but Kazuki's mobile phone was just barely functional. They'd agreed to keep the references as vague as possible, in case Babylon City was listening. "I've got you and I've got her. First right off where you are, then straight ahead, then down the flight of stairs, and you'll be on the tenth floor and the walkway directly above where she currently is."
"Excellent," Kazuki said. "Excuse me a moment --"
They took the corner wide, as Juubei moved into the lead and a group of punks abruptly scattered to take an interest in their cigarettes.
"-- ahead and now going down. Just a moment."
The two of them separated at the foot of the stairs to peer over the edge of the walkway. Juubei coughed, then pointed. "Down there, Kazuki-sama."
Kazuki moved to join him. Yes, there was Hevn, swaying her way along the corridor in quick tapping steps, hair floating from side to side with each step, hips swinging in a tick, tock, tick with her walk, the tiers of her skirt flicking around her ankles. Nobody was trying to get in her way. That was unusual.
"Stay up here for the moment," he murmured to Juubei. "Follow in parallel. Don't go down unless she changes corridor. We don't want her to spot us."
"Of course, Kazuki-sama," Juubei murmured in tones that didn't quite cross the line into are you trying to teach me the basics? but came quite close to it.
Kazuki gave a quick, apologetic nod, and headed along the walkway, his eyes on Hevn ahead of and below them.
She stopped next to a doorway, and paused to tap something into the keypad there, her body turned to shield the keypad from the people passing by. Kazuki squinted, hanging back, just close enough to see the movement of her hand.
The door opened smoothly, receding into the wall. Hevn stepped through into the brightly-lit interior, visible for a moment against clean white walls, and then the door slid closed again, hiding her from view.
"3275," he murmured, half to Juubei, half to himself. "Give her five minutes, then follow."
Five minutes later, he said, "We're going in," to the phone, turned it off, and slid it into his pocket before dropping neatly over the edge of the walkway into the corridor below. Juubei was an instant behind him, landing softly on the balls of his feet, a shadow at his back.
Perhaps this would lead them to Toshiki as well? He could only hope so.
None of the people shuffling by paid any attention to them either. This wasn't an area he knew well; it was one of the seedier parts, where Volts had only intervened if absolutely necessary, leaving it to churn away in sullen, quiet misery. Kazuki turned away from them, trusting Juubei to watch for trouble, and pressed the four keys in sequence.
The door slid open. Inside was a single well-lit white-walled room, an elevator of some sort. It was empty.
Kazuki stepped inside, and gestured Juubei to follow him. There was a single button on the wall; it didn't even have a symbol on it. Clearly this elevator only went in one direction. In that case, Hevn must have also gone the same way. Convenient.
He pressed the button. The door slid shut.
There was a faint trembling as the lift began to rise. Kazuki looked around. Slick white plastic walls, sparkling clean. Slick white floor of the same material. He was about to comment on it when he saw Juubei cock his head, hesitate, then look up, and he did the same.
Thin tendrils of pale vapor were coming from tiny holes at the seam between the walls and the ceiling.
"The button!" he snapped. "Wreck the circuitry --" The button was making lazy circles in his vision, going round and round and then swelling like a great luminous porthole, slowly opening like an eye. He was lying against Juubei, soft, warm, supporting him, white walls, bright eye, pale air that ran into his lungs and made him tired, so tired. Juubei was saying something but he couldn't hear it, he could only feel it in his bones, like a promise, like a heartbeat, and the brightness was all around him, was bright darkness, was darkness.
---
They had been deceived, decoyed, and misdirected. Himiko would not have described herself as the most impulsive of women, but should they run into the person responsible for this, she was strongly tempted not to interfere when Akabane pulled out his scalpels.
Eh. She was a professional first, an offended woman second. However, she was currently an offended professional.
The corridor (and how long had they been walking through endless corridors? How long had they been passing through intersections that had all been alike, even though she'd scent-marked them to make sure they weren't going back on their steps?) was approaching a larger open space. The quality of the light was different there. She could taste new smells on the air; blood, alcohol, flour, flame.
Akabane raised a hand slightly. Caution. Permit me to take the lead.
She nodded, and slipped the vials of Flame and Degeneration Scent from her belt, balancing them between her fingers, falling half a pace behind him.
They stepped into the room at the end of the corridor. It was far wider than she had expected, high and arching, with beams of metal interlacing on the walls and forming patterns on the ceiling. Three people stood at the centre of the room, beside a carved column that rose to the rafters; Hevn, Kagami, and the man she'd met at the start of the assignment, the one that the others had identified as Miroku Natsuhiko. Patterns of powder and blood on the floor around them teased at Himiko's memory. The tracery at Hevn's feet looked like an old-fashioned compass, or a crossroads. There was a bottle on the ground by her, and a cage with something in it -- birds of some sort, black chickens? -- and a knife lying on top. The image of the three figures and the surrounding traceries was like a photograph, though she couldn't say why. It meant something. She knew it all meant something.
Akabane's shoulders squared, and she heard him take a long slow hiss of indrawn breath. Edges clicked together in the palm of his gloved right hand.
Voodoo child, the voice of her past whispered to her, and she recognized ritual, but not which ritual.
Kagami and Miroku stepped forward, as Hevn raised her hands and cried out. A folded scarf held her hair back from her face. Her arms were bare, stained in red and black.
"Madam Negotiator," Akabane said, and Himiko could hear the shadow of death in his voice, "one more step on this road and you place yourself in my way."
Hevn twirled to face the four directions, calling the same thing each time. The words were in French. Himiko didn't understand them. They made her shiver.
Akabane tipped his hat with his free hand. "Bloody Sword," he whispered, and redness flowed out to become solid, to become a sword. He moved towards Hevn with the speed of a stooping hawk.
The Miroku moved to meet him, drawing a long blade from the canister which hung across his back. The two swords met in front of Hevn in a deep-toned bell-note, but Hevn herself ignored Akabane's blade, half talking, half singing, gesturing rhythmically.
And then there wasn't any more time for Himiko to watch, other than the normal in-battle awareness of where all the other combattants were, because Kagami was coming for her, sparkles trailing behind him like stardust. She circled and pivoted for room to maneuver, using a quick blast of Fire Scent to force him back.
Practicalities. Practicalities. He couldn't use Diamond Dust and risk killing Hevn. That was useful. Images, though . . .
Five Kagamis split apart and circled round to take her down from all directions. She jumped high, skidded low, and ran up the beams that patterned the wall, feet light as falling feathers as she heard Kagami pursuing her. Without even thinking she clipped the two vials she was holding back into their harness, and slipped out the Acceleration Scent instead. It had worked last time.
Hevn was still chanting. The Miroku yelled something, but his voice had changed, and she spared a glance down to see that it was a different man facing Akabane, pale-haired and with a shorter blade, but still in the same clothes -- damn Ban, why couldn't he just have explained whatever the stupid deal with the Miroku was? -- and the two of them still seemed matched, or at least neither of them was lying on the ground yet.
The thought which had been nagging at her got through. Someone had planned all this. Presumably whoever was behind this ambush now. They knew about her. Kagami knew that Acceleration Scent had almost let her take him down last time, which meant that either he had a way to deal with it now, or this whole fight was part of some sort of delaying strategy and the moment she used it --
The Miroku seemed to be straight weapons-users. They had to breathe.
"Doctor Jackal!" she screamed, pitching her voice to carry, and hoping that he wouldn't be so carried away with the thrill of bloodlust or the pride of battle that he'd ignore her. She took a sniff of Acceleration Scent and turned to race directly past Kagami and groundwards, ducking under his blow but making no attempt to respond, streaking towards the duelling swordsmen (wait, was the Miroku female and using a spear now? This was going too far) and gathered enough breath to yell, "Change partners!"
Hevn reached down to the cage at her feet and dragged out a black cockerel. It crowed and struggled in her hand as she slit its throat. Blood splashed across the floor and over her hands and dress.
"No!" Akabane parried the spear, turned his blow into a slice, and had it caught in a lock by a pair of daggers held by a shorter, sneering man. "Get the negotiator, Lady Poison! Trust me!"
Kagami's mirror-shard whistled above Himiko's head as she ducked and rolled, and survival instincts kept her moving and a couple of paces ahead of him, and she tracked laboriously through the thoughts of this is the only time that Akabane has ever told me to take someone down and this is the only time he has threatened a non-combatant, and the two facts together jarred her into action, let her sprint for Hevn and turn her momentum into a straight extended-palm strike at Hevn's throat.
Her fingers slammed into Kagami's shoulder as he threw himself between the two women, and she felt her blow go bone-deep as he took the thrust and brought his glass shard up in a parry. She ducked it and feinted right for a moment, as though to dodge sideways, then swung left, into and under that lethal fragment of mirror, trying for Hevn again; this time he didn't even attempt to be elegant about it, but threw himself on her like a jaguar, going for her wrists, openly trying to pin her down.
Behind him, Hevn screamed, "Carrefour! Carrefour! Carrefour!"
There was a muffled cry, and then a crunch as a blade bit into flesh, and the sound of a body hitting the floor.
And it wasn't even as if he was a friend --
Himiko fastened her teeth in Kagami's neck, kicked his ankle out from where he was supporting himself on it, half got her knee into his groin, slammed her elbow into his side, and was out from under him and running
-- he was just someone whom she had worked with for years, whom she knew better than other people did, who had always been at her back when she needed him, who had never treated her as a child, who was Doctor Jackal just as she was Lady Poison --
to where Akabane lay on the floor, blood running from the wound in his side. Natsuhiko Miroku stood over him, sword still drawn, but he made no attempt to stop Himiko going on her knees next to him and touching one hand to his neck and knowing that it was quite simply too late and nothing could be enough
-- in all the mazes of criminals and contacts and professionals and cutouts and blank faces, he had been a real person --
and that this was another death that she couldn't stop.
"Doctor Jackal?" She made a question of it. Her voice was level, even, and she floated above the ocean of grief.
"Not any more, child," he whispered. His eyes were softer than she had ever seen them, as though a different person were looking out at her through the familiar face. "Child -- Himiko -- I am sorry . . ."
His eyes closed. His breathing stopped. Beside her, his sword became a long streak of blood painted across the floor.
His blood was as red as death. Inside her, her heart skipped and then beat faster, faster, drums inside her, the dance that tore people apart. Red death. Her hand clenched around one of the vials at her belt, shattering it in her hand, and the fragments of glass cut into her fingers, the drug spread in her bloodstream. She was rising without even knowing it, Miroku Natsuhiko backing away as she moved towards him as smoothly as murder, her fingers touched his sword a first time, a second time, she swung round and raked a blow up the inside of his arm and brought more blood spilling out as the two of them danced across the surface of the floor, across the howling sea of pain that she would not yet allow herself to fall into, too close to each other for Kagami to strike.
From another time, another place; imagine the drop of water falling into the pool below. Do not let yourself be touched. Feel the grief, feel the pain, but do not let them be your master. See. Hear. Know. Move.
They spun across the floor together, the Miroku flowing between faces and shapes -- a white-haired man, the woman, a man with a scar across his face, a boy with glasses and spinning rings -- but each time she drew blood, and each time it wasn't enough. The Miroku, the seven-faces-in-one, was constantly renewed with each change, his wounds healed, his strength fresh again. There was no time to draw on her other poisons, only to keep the wheel of the combat turning, and though the anger and the thirst for vengeance still ran in her without stopping, with each blow she scored she knew that it wouldn't be enough to kill him.
Back to the original Miroku Natsuhiko again. Three more strikes, and then something flickered in the shadows of his eyes, and she realised it was coming, but she couldn't move quite fast enough to evade Kagami's grab at her wrist from behind her.
The flat of the blade coming towards her, and her own reflection in it for a moment; calm, weeping, utterly mad eyes.
Darkness.
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