By the Sword

by F. Paul Wilson

  He straightened in his seat. The Japanese guy in the Catskills—Yoshio. This guy looked like him. But he couldn’t be him. He’d been executed by Sam Baker. As cold-blooded an act as Jack had ever seen. One Baker had paid for.

  This new guy looked enough like him to be his brother. Maybe he was. But even so, how did he know Jack?

  He shook his head. Be glad when this was over. And he had a feeling it would be over soon. Because he had a pretty good idea who had the sword now.

  Never would have pegged O’Day as a killer. Just went to show the lengths a collector would go to.

  Gollum had found his Precious.

  “You’re looking for a sword,” said a woman’s voice behind him. “You should be looking for the baby as well.”

  He turned and saw a twenty-something girl dressed in black like him, with bright burgundy hair and heavily kohled eyes. She sported a slew of ear, nostril, eyebrow, and lip piercings. A pit bull stared up at him from the end of the leash clutched in her hand.

  “You’re one of them,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Prove it.”

  She lifted the front of her Sandman T-shirt to reveal a deep depression just to the right of her navel.

  She smiled. “Need a closer look?”

  Jack shook his head. He knew it went clean through and exited in the small of her back.

  Women with dogs had been walking in and out of his life, each knowing more than they should about him and what was going on.

  “I’d love to find the baby—and its mother. Where’s Dawn?”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes I know and other times I don’t. She appears and disappears. But her baby…”

  “What about it?”

  “It is important.”

  “How?”

  “I wish I knew. Like the katana you seek—unique among swords—the baby is unique among mortals. It has the potential to be used for immense good or terrible ill. Whoever controls that baby may well control the future.” She frowned. “Or not.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up.”

  “There’s nothing clear about it.”

  “I promised to protect Dawn, but not her baby. If she wants to get an abortion—and she has every reason to—should I stop her?”

  The girl’s expression looked almost pained. “I wish I could say. Perhaps it would be for the best. It is a wild card that could provide the Adversary with an unbeatable hand. Then again…it may allow us to trump him.”

  Jack sighed. “You’re a big help.”

  “I wish I could tell you more. That is all I know. We are in uncharted waters.” As the train stopped, she said, “I get off here.”

  Jack didn’t want to see her go. So many questions…

  “There’s nothing more you can tell me?”

  She shook her head. “When I know more, I shall come to you. Until then…”

  She stepped out onto the platform and let the dog lead her away. Jack knew better than to follow.

  18

  “The hireling has not yet found the katana, sensei.”

  Toru, sitting in his darkened room, did not turn at Tadasu’s voice, but kept his face to his window, gazing out at the night.

  “He is truly searching? You have followed him?”

  “He is difficult to follow, but I believe so, sensei.”

  “You think he is an honorable man, then?”

  “I do, sensei.”

  “Will that make it more difficult for you to do what must be done when the time comes?” Toru sensed an instant’s hesitation. “Well…will it?”

  “No, sensei. Nothing will deter me from my duty to the Order.”

  “Good.” He waved a hand. “Prepare the shoten for me. We leave within the hour.”

  The door closed, cutting off the light from the hallway and plunging the room into darkness. Toru did not move. He sat and thought, and his thoughts were not happy. Instead of handling this matter on its own, the Order had been forced to depend on a gaijin mercenary. Humiliating.

  But the Kakureta Kao would rise again. The Seer had promised.

  He went to the small wooden bureau that held his worldly belongings and withdrew a small case of sturdy ebony, its top inlaid with ivory. He removed the top and examined the doku-ippen within: two dozen slivers of wood, each saturated with a different mix of herbs and extracts, rested in individual grooves. The ones ringed with blue caused mere unconsciousness. The others were soaked with deadly toxins: Those marked with black were employed for instant effect, those marked with varying shades of red conferred a delayed death. All were untraceable.

  He would need one of the reds tonight.

  So many needs in his life now…

  The Order needed the katana, so that its future might be measured in millennia.

  The Order also needed a successful test of the ekisu tonight so that New York City’s future might be measured in days.

  19

  Hideo’s ancestors answered his prayers.

  A fair number of traffic cams around the city were fakes, installed on the principle that if one thinks one is being watched, one will behave accordingly. But the cam near Gerrish-san’s apartment was of the functioning variety and—bless his ancestors—showed the building’s entrance in the far upper left corner of the frame.

  Kenji sat with him, absorbing all Hideo was doing. So difficult to reconcile this young, eager-to-learn face now with his cold-blooded expression while pumping round after round into Cooter-san.

  Hideo turned to him. “How long do you think Gerrish-san was dead when we found him?”

  The answer was important. He needed to know how far back in the recording to go. He had no idea of how to judge a death, but he sensed Kenji had seen his share of corpses.

  He answered in English: “From way blood was only part”—he looked to Hideo for help—“thicked?”

  “Clotted.”

  He nodded. “Yes, clotted. I say one hour.”

  To be safe, Hideo began reviewing at a point ninety minutes before their arrival at the apartment. He showed Kenji how to fast-forward, then leaned back and concentrated on the screen. The entrance was not terribly busy, so he did not have to stop Kenji often.

  The onscreen clock read 19:52 when he saw a man step out of the entrance carrying an oblong object.

  “Stop.”

  Kenji did so and Hideo took over the controls. He enhanced and enlarged the image. The object under the man’s arm appeared to be a rolled-up rug. He estimated its length at approximately ninety to one hundred centimeters. Long enough to hide the katana they sought.

  The man was moving north. If he walked any faster he would have been trotting. One might even think he was escaping from something. A murder scene, perhaps?

  Unfortunately he kept his face straight ahead, providing only a high-angle profile that Hideo doubted would provide sufficient mapping points for the facial recognition program.

  Hideo called up the map of traffic cams in Jamaica and found one two blocks north. He prayed again to his ancestors, begging them to go back in time and guide this man on a straight path to this intersection. Then he accessed the new cam and began his review at 19:52. He did not fast-forward but waited patiently, praying for the man to appear. If he had turned left or right at the preceding intersection, Hideo might never find him again.

  Finally, miraculously, he appeared. Hideo closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief and thanks, then focused on the man with the rug. He crossed the intersection heading north, then turned west and waited for the green.

  “Look up,” Hideo said aloud, earning a puzzled look from Kenji. “Look up and check the traffic signal. Look up!”

  And then, almost as if he’d heard him, the man looked up, almost directly into the camera. Hideo froze the frame, enlarged, enhanced, and saved. He would enter it into the facial recognition program later. But first…

  He returned to the view of the entrance to Gerrish’s apartment building and watched until he saw himself a
nd the three yakuza exit. He let the recording run even longer, but no sign of Yoshio’s ronin.

  He sighed. He didn’t see any way of finding him. But he should be grateful. At least he’d secured a picture of the current owner of Sasaki-san’s katana. That was the important thing. Of course it would all come to nothing if he had never been arrested and entered into the system. But Hideo had a feeling that a man who would slit another’s throat to acquire a sword would have to have been arrested at some point during his adult life. And if he had, Hideo would find him.

  The ronin, however…the odds were high against his ever having another chance at that man.

  But Hideo had a feeling that, with the help of his ancestors, he might beat those odds.

  20

  Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

  Someone had seen her. She totally knew it.

  All right, she didn’t know it, but how could someone not have seen her? She’d got on the C without knowing where she was going, but that had been okay. What had counted was being off the street. Then she’d looked around the subway car and seen her face on half a dozen flyers.

  She’d kept her head down, her mind screaming for a solution. Finally it hit her: tourists.

  Totally.

  Native New Yorkers would have her face burned on their brains by now, but tourists came and went. And tourists usually spent their time gawking at the sights and gazing up at the skyscrapers and such, not studying posters. So where could she find the most tourists? In the Times Square/theater district, of course.

  Tons of tourists.

  She’d ducked out of the C at 42nd Street. The Port Authority had tempted her—hop a bus to New Jersey where Jerry would never find her. But she knew nothing about Jersey, and figured she’d probably need a car there. She didn’t know if they even did abortions in Jersey.

  No, better to stay where she knew her way around. At least for now. Lots of abortion clinics in the city. Once that was over she could think about relocating.

  She’d wound through the crowds on Eighth toward the theaters. When she saw a bunch of men wearing John Deere caps and string ties come out of the Milford Plaza, she knew that was the place for her.

  But checking in hadn’t been easy. They’d been totally suspicious about her wanting to pay cash, but she had no choice. She couldn’t use a credit card—someone watching her account would know exactly where she was. They’d wanted ID and she had to show her driver’s license. That put her real name on the register.

  And then the room. A single. Dawn could so not believe how small it was. A postage stamp with like four feet between the walls and the king-size bed. Even the mirrored wall couldn’t make it look bigger. Plus the bathroom had fixtures that looked fifty years old.

  All for the bargain price of $326 a night.

  She guessed she could have chosen a better grade, but that meant more money and she wanted to conserve as much of her cash as possible. She had no idea of how long it would last.

  So for the time being this would be home.

  Gross.

  She went to the window and looked out at the night. She couldn’t see the street, only rooftops and the glow from all the lighted marquees on 45th Street directly below. Was someone down there in the crowds, watching the hotel, waiting for her to come out? Waiting so he could collect his reward?

  She couldn’t leave, couldn’t even risk going to the hotel restaurant. She’d have to order room service and hope the delivery guy didn’t recognize her.

  She felt just as trapped as she had at Mr. Osala’s, but at least there she’d been safe. Here…

  This was a nightmare.

  Why not just call Henry and have him pick her up? But then she’d be back where she started.

  She couldn’t take it. She’d been ready to end it all before but had let Mr. Osala talk her out of it. Why not finish the job now? Get it done this time.

  She tried to open the window but it wouldn’t budge. She picked up the room’s one chair and slammed it against the glass. It bounced back. She tried it again with the same result. Some sort of safety glass.

  She dropped onto the bed and began to cry.

  She had to find a way out of this. She’d formed the beginnings of a plan on the subway. Maybe she should go with that.

  She pulled herself together, grabbed the bag of stuff she’d bought at the drugstore, and headed for the bathroom.

  21

  Using his flashlight sparingly, Shiro rushed back through the dark woods to his teacher, praying the news he brought would not cause him to abort the test.

  “Sensei, there are people in the little cabin there!”

  Akechi-sensei, a faintly limned shadow in the starlight, nodded. “All the better. Proceed.”

  “But what if they interfere?”

  “They will not.” He pointed back toward the woods. “Go. Hurry.”

  Shiro obeyed, returning to where Tadasu waited with the shoten. The chosen site lay half a mile north of a golf course and barely more than half a mile from any dwelling, yet here among the silent trees, civilization could have been a thousand miles away.

  That changed as he neared the rotting cabin in a tiny forgotten clearing.

  Not completely forgotten, obviously. Four teenagers—two couples—had driven a battered Jeep to the cabin and begun an impromptu party. They had beer and were playing loud music.

  He found Tadasu about fifty yards from the cabin. The shoten lay bound and gagged on the ground before him.

  “Sensei says to proceed,” he said when he arrived.

  Tadasu nodded, then knelt next to the shoten. He pulled a blue vial from his pocket.

  “Hold his head and remove the gag,” he said.

  Shiro did as he was told and the shoten began cursing.

  “What the fuck you sonabitches—”

  “Drink this,” Tadasu said, forcing the mouth of the vial between his lips.

  The old drunk apparently never refused anything to drink because he swallowed it in one gulp. Then he made a face.

  “Shit! What is that shit?”

  Shiro reapplied the gag, then stepped away. Tadasu remained kneeling.

  “Now we wait.”

  The shoten’s muffled protests and struggles against his bonds slowed, then ceased. When he lay quiet, Tadasu removed the gag and then produced a red-striped wooden sliver.

  “A doku-ippen?” Shiro said.

  “Akechi-sensei’s idea. Just to be safe.” He pricked the shoten’s neck with it, then rose and stepped over him. “Back to sensei. Quickly. We don’t know how soon it takes effect.”

  Shiro led the way, and soon the three of them were standing together next to their car on an empty side road, staring in the general direction of the shoten.

  Suspense gripped Shiro like a vise. His breath felt trapped in his chest.

  “What will happen, sensei?”

  “Something wonderful, Shiro. No one alive has seen a Kuroikaze. We shall be the first in a generation.”

  “Why did we use a doku-ippen?”

  “The ekisu causes the one who drinks it to become a focus for the Kuroikaze. The Black Wind will last as long as the shoten survives. Because this is an experiment to test the ekisu, I do not want large-scale death. We will save that for later. I had you choose a sickly shoten because, while the Kuroikaze is sapping the life from all it touches, it is also diminishing the life of the shoten. The longer the shoten survives, the more fierce the wind, the greater the radius of death. The particular doku-ippen used will bring death shortly after it is introduced into the body. So even if this wasted shoten taps into some hidden reserves of strength, he won’t survive long enough to raise a full-fledged Kuroikaze.”

  “There!” Tadasu cried, pointing. “Something is happening!”

  Shiro strained to see, but the starlight was dim, and the trees dark.

  And then he saw it—a layer of blackness overspreading an area of trees…a cloud, blacker than Shiro had ever seen…so black it didn’t reflect the meage
r starlight, but rather seemed to absorb it…devour it.

  The way it oozed across the treetops made Shiro’s gut crawl. This was evil, and he didn’t like to think of the Order to which he had devoted his life as dealing with evil. But then, this was certainly no more evil than the atomic bombs that killed so many in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  Yes, if he thought of it that way, he could accept.

  He watched and waited, expecting to see the inexorable flow of the blackness slow and then begin to ebb. But it continued to expand, coming their way.

  “Sensei? Shouldn’t it be stopping now?”

  Akechi-sensei turned to Tadasu. “You are sure the point pierced his skin?”

  “I saw blood, sensei.”

  “Then he should die any minute.”

  But the blackness showed no sign of slowing, let alone retreating.

  “Perhaps we had better move farther way,” Tadasu said.

  “No,” said their teacher. “If you did your duty, we have nothing to fear.”

  Shiro felt he had a lot to fear. That blackness…it made him want to run, and hide, find his mother and cower behind her.

  Abruptly the blackness changed. Instead of spreading toward them, it began expanding upward, shooting a towering ebony column into the sky, reaching toward the stars.

  And then it was gone, and the blackness over the trees evaporated like smoke in a gale.

  “Quickly,” Akechi-sensei said. “Into the woods. We must see what it has done.”

  Shiro led the way, directing his flashlight beam ahead of him. He moved cautiously at first because he didn’t know what to expect. But then, seeing no trace of the blackness, he picked up speed…

  Until he came upon the dead vegetation—like crossing a line of death where everything on one side thrived and everything on the other was dead. Every leaf on every tree and bush was wilted and brown, every needle on every pine was brown, even the weeds were dead. Nothing moved. No owls hooted, no crickets chirped, no mosquitoes bit.