Chapter Seven
"Put this on." Ban passed Ginji the anorak and balaclava.
"I'm not sure," Ginji protested, dangling the clothing between his fingers like a particularly repellent wet newspaper. "Don't you think it'll attract even more attention than it would for us to be just going in there?"
"We've already been through this," Himiko snapped, doing up the zip on her own anorak in a single angry movement. "The moment we take a single step in there with you recognisable, they're all going to start screaming Raitei Amano Ginji, Raitei Amano Ginji. Just like last time." She picked up the remaining balaclava on the table. "I don't know about you, but I don't think that makes for a quiet retrieval mission."
"The brat's got it," Ban said, snatching the balaclava from her fingers and forcing it down over her head. Muffled noises came from behind the wool. "And if Miroku Natsuhiko hears she's coming, that blows our mission too. And the same for me."
"But, Ban-chan," Ginji protested, "you may be wearing a balaclava, but you're still wearing your glasses."
Ban adjusted his purple shades with one finger. It made it clear that the question of his removing them was not open to discussion.
"And Akabane-san . . ."
"Yes, Ginji-kun?" Akabane queried politely as Ginji trailed off.
"Never mind," Ginji muttered, and pulled the balaclava on over his blond hair.
Mr No-Brake had dropped them off near the entrance to Mugenjou which would take them closest to the West Block and the Spice Market. Ban had been the one to suggest disguises, and Himiko had agreed. Ginji had let himself be persuaded, though frankly he thought it was all a bit pointless; Makubex would spot them coming in, however much they tried to disguise themselves.
He tried to remember Ren from the days of VOLTS. Surely she'd been there then? But no face answered his thoughts, no child's voice sounded in his memory.
Perhaps she'd just never been in the inner circle. Raitei had been aloof, had kept to himself and to his Kings and lieutenants.
But that was Raitei, and this was now.
---
Inside Mugenjou it was the same as it always was, buzzing like a live wire, with neon lights burning in the ceiling and streaks of lamplight and candlelight cutting through the chinks in shuttered and curtained windows, fragmentary against the darkness of the Tokyo night. People were out and about, doing business or scrounging for trash that could be somehow reused.
Ginji led the way, then Ban, then Himiko, and Akabane a few paces behind all of them, pace silent, the skirts of his drifting coat making his shadow shift and flux against the walls. People glanced at them and then looked away again. It was common in Mugenjou for people to go masked or hide their identity. Sensible inhabitants took the hint and didn't ask.
And as for Doctor Jackal, well . . . what sane person would want to try to question him?
He could feel the familiar pulse of Mugenjou in his blood and sinews, but he did his best to ignore it and let it recede into the background. So far nobody seemed to have recognised him. That was good. The disguise was working. It wasn't just the lack of people running around attempting to greet (or kill) him, but nobody was taking meaningful looks at them and then sliding off into the shadows with intent to inform, either. He knew how to spot that.
"How much further?" Ban hissed from a foot behind him.
"Just round the corner!" Ginji turned and waited for the others to catch up. "Himiko-chan, the Spice Market's just round the corner here . . ."
Himiko nodded, and rubbed at her nose with the back of one hand. She looked much younger and more vulnerable with her hair covered and in the heavy anorak. "I can already smell some of it. How big is the place?"
Ginji tried to remember. It had always been Kazuki who visited most frequently; the place was one of the classier parts of Mugenjou, and there had been exotic, beautiful wares on sale, things which had drawn Kazuki like the echoes of his own family and its distant elegance. "About . . . um, a couple of sports fields? There are lots of stalls, and some rooms built off it that people use as stores for the bigger things like rugs and furniture. It got called the Spice Market because that was how it started out, but it's expanded since then. I think the actual spices are in the north part. But . . ." He hesitated. "There's this woman in the south-east corner, or at least she used to be, and she always knew what was going on. If you-know-who was here, she might have heard about him."
Ban shoved his hands into his pockets. "I don't like splitting up, but if the place isn't too big, then if one of our groups runs into trouble or spots him, the other one should be able to hear that something's going on. Right, Jackal?"
"Indeed," Akabane murmured. "Assuming that matters last so long as to require the second group to interfere."
Ban nodded curtly. "Okay. Ginji and I will hit this old lady up for some info. You and Lady Poison there can -- go sniffing around, right?"
Himiko's mouth pursed as though she'd bitten into something sour, but she returned the nod. "Right. Call us if you need any help, Ban."
Ban snorted, turned away, and dragged Ginji several paces before pausing to ask where they should be going.
---
Himiko found herself liking the place more than she'd thought she would. It was -- interesting. Yes, that was a good word for it. Interesting. Yamato had taken her to places like this sometimes, when he'd been making deals, when she and he and Ban had been working together, but Lady Poison only rarely visited markets, and then it was just to find the ingredients she needed for some of her rarer perfumes. Consciously virtuous that she was playing the part of a casual shopper, she wandered along a set of stalls and peered at the plastic-wrapped dolls for sale. Some of them were already customised, with locks of hair, pins, salt, and small pouches of graveyard dust, while others proudly proclaimed themselves as CURSE-YOUR-OWN-ENEMY.
Akabane paced down the row parallel to hers, a drifting shadow on the edge of her vision. She wondered what he was looking at. Knives, perhaps?
She turned a corner and reached the herbs and spices. Oh, now this was important, surely Ban and Ginji couldn't begrudge her a few purchases, and why on earth had Ginji never told her about this place before? They had John-the-Conqueror root, marked pure, snakeshead root, and that was just at the first glance. This demanded investigation. Surely a casual shopper would shop? She leaned on the edge of the stall and began to dicker with the man sitting in the shadows of a rumpled awning, his bone earrings swinging wide and white as he rose to argue the herb's quality, and --
Something white moved in the corner of her eye. A long white coat. Shoulder-caped. She'd seen that before.
She turned to get a reflected view in the burnished brass pot to one side. No. It wasn't him. This was a younger man, almost a boy, no older than Ginji. His large spectacles gave him an ingenous, charming air, and though he moved with the smooth assured grace of a martial artist, though he had a bag strapped across his back much as Miroku Natsuhiko had done, it wasn't the same man.
There are seven of them, Akabane had said.
"Yes," she finished, "that'll do."
"We take Visa," the stallkeeper suggested hopefully.
Himiko slapped down a wad of notes on the plank in front of her. "And you take a discount for cash, right?"
"That too," he agreed.
She watched the white-coated boy in the brass reflection as he picked his way through the crowd. Nobody tried to pick his pockets or molest him, which in itself said something about him. He didn't seem to have noticed her. He was heading towards a cluster of stalls holding books.
Akabane cut through the crowd towards him like a spearhead, people backing away from him as he came, no blades drawn yet but every movement precise and smooth. Not an attack, not quite yet, but the threat of edges glinted in his dark eyes and swept behind him in the shadows of his coat.
The Miroku blinked, turned, and ran.
Himiko was torn between wanting to shout at Akabane for alerting their quarry (though really, he couldn't have hidden for long) and not wanting to waste the time. She grabbed her purchases and stuffed them into her pockets as she ran to cut the Miroku off before he could reach the corridor over to the left. Unfortunately, the crowd didn't give her the respect or the sheer paralysing blind fear that Akabane commanded. Vaulting over a crockery stall and sliding between two rails of wedding kimonos, she came out skidding between crane-embroidered sleeves and managed three steps in open space before she had to take to the partitions between stalls for want of a better path, hearing the wood cracking behind her as she ran. Shouts and yells came from behind her as she sprinted after the Miroku and Akabane, but both of them were moving faster than she was and she didn't have the time to pause and use Acceleration Scent, she could only work on following and not losing them, oops, well he shouldn't have stacked glassware there and she was going to come back and she might even make an anonymous donation to that stall if they were polite to her next time, down now and between a pair of large men with very large hands who seemed to think she was avoiding paying for something, after the white coat and the black coat, and someone shouting behind her, was that Ban, well, he should have been paying attention, she couldn't stop now . . .
She followed Akabane into the mouth of the tunnel, and her slim form was lost in its darkness.
---
Ban chewed on the butt of his cigarette and tried to work out what it was that was worrying him. There was something niggling at the back of his mind, something which he hadn't thought through properly or had ignored, and he couldn't see what it was. He squinted at nothing in particular through his glasses. It wasn't just Mugenjou, or Ginji, or Himiko, or even Jackal, but . . . something else. There was something he was missing, and possibly it was just simply too big for him to see, a deception so huge that he couldn't see its edges and didn't recognise it.
Ginji was being Ginji. There was no other way to put it. He'd thrown back his hood and slipped off his balaclava the moment they'd got into this small space, delineated from the rest of the market by heavy drapes and thick enough with incense to cure a dozen kippers. And now he was sitting there nattering away with the old hag who owned the place and who had so far three times attempted to pinch Ban's ass.
Not that his ass was a bad ass. He could understand that it drew women like a herring drew flies. He was comfortably conscious of the tight embrace of denim, the cool suavity of muscle.
But dammit, he already had enough old hags in his life without getting another.
"Why yes," the old hag in question said brightly, "there is a man staying near here who's just the way you describe. My great-grand-son's nephew's cousin's friend -- her name's Ludmilla and she's such a sweet girl -- she said she saw someone like that buying everything he'd need for a nice nourishing meal yesterday, and then around here a few hours ago. And speaking of meals, you're far too thin, Raitei-kun." Somehow she managed to make Raitei sound as if it should always have a -kun attached to the end. "Eat, eat, I tell you, but do you ever listen to me? You're a lovely boy, but you need a wife to take you in hand . . ."
Ginji ducked his head and blushed. There were screams and crashes outside.
With an absolute certainty born of bitter experience, Ban threw back the drapes to look out and see exactly what the hell the brat and the Jackal were up to now. He caught sight of a long white coat and a familiar pair of glasses heading towards the corridor in the far wall, a dark hat and coat speeding after them, and a smaller figure going hell-for-leather over the tops of stalls and merchants in order to catch up with the pair of them. "Come on!" he yelled to Ginji. "He's getting away!"
"I'm terribly sorry," Ginji said earnestly to the old woman, "but . . ."
Ban grabbed Ginji's shoulder and dragged him along. Dodge or bulldoze? The two of them went directly through a dried fish stall to get onto one of the major passageways, ignoring the shrieks and scattered whitebait, and cut across towards the flicker of passing trenchcoats.
"Which way?" Ban called to Ginji as they separated for a moment to curve around the sides of a kitchen implements stall. He casually picked up a set of bamboo steamers as he passed, and tossed them into a thug with the unmistakeable look of security who seemed to want them to stop and explain.
"It goes north!" Ginji shouted back, sidestepping to avoid an awestruck group of children who were pointing and gasping, "Surely that isn't --"
"It isn't," Ban snapped at them as he tried to catch up with their quarry. Shit. Didn't think Miroku Natsuhiko was that fast. Or Jackal, or the brat. "Where from there?" he demanded, ducking under a teetering grill which was temptingly loaded with yakitori and reminded him that they hadn't eaten yet.
"Just -- residential -- rooms, flats --" Ginji gasped, as the two of them came out into a blessedly open space.
The corridor was a direct run ahead of them. Himiko vanished into it, following the two men ahead of her.
We'll be caught up with them in a moment, Ban thought, and followed, Ginji behind him.
---
The Honky-Tonk was still open, but it was quiet now. The customers had all gone home, ready for a quiet night's rest. Paul sat behind the bar, laptop open in front of him, and contemplated the computer disk in his hand. He'd sent Natsumi and Rena out to the convenience store to buy some food, just in case the boys should come back and want a snack, he'd told them, but more to keep them busy and occupied. To give him time to think.
The bell on the door tinkled, and Hevn stepped inside. Her long skirt swayed around her ankles and flirted with the shadows, and her hair fell from where her headscarf held it in a long flow of golden silk down her back. Her eyes were the same gold, cool and clear.
"Any news?" Paul asked.
Hevn shook her head. "Nothing. The last I heard was when they went out after the Transporters." She shrugged. "And there isn't anything I can do now."
Paul nodded. "A drink?"
"Please." Her hips swung sweetly as she walked across to perch on a barstool, her heels tapping with each pace. Paul had seen her walk often enough now to be used to it -- immunised, even -- but it was still a beautiful thing to watch. Her skin was like heavy cream, flawless and beautiful.
He turned his attention to the bottles, and poured her a gin and tonic.
"What's this?" She tapped one nail against the laptop screen. "Still researching?"
"Checking something." He set the glass down next to her. "And you? Did you just drop by for company?"
She pondered, then took a sip of her gin and tonic, and smiled. "Tying up loose ends, really. You know how it is. You plan everything to the last inch, you go through every single loose end, but there's always a random factor somewhere."
Paul laughed. "Like Ginji?"
Hevn nodded, and her golden hair swayed behind her like flames. "Like Ginji."
"Well." He shrugged, and slipped the computer disk back into a drawer, conscious of her eyes on him. "So you've been through all your loose ends on this one, then?"
Hevn nodded again. She rose from her stool, shoulders pale under the bar's harsh light. "Just like you. You look tired, Paul."
Paul frowned and turned to look at himself in the glass of the window, moved by a quick twinge of vanity. "Do I?"
"Afraid so. And people talk about me worrying about the boys." She laughed briefly. "You sit down and let me mix you something for once. Master."
"Well . . ." At least it took her attention away from the computer and the disk. He didn't trust anyone enough to share that with them -- not even Natsumi, not even the GetBackers. "Sure," he said, and let her cross behind him to the ranks of bottles that hung behind the bar. A drink would do him good.
---
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