Dead Man Rising

by Lilith Saintcrow

  He's not coming back. Maybe I can grieve instead of trying to avoid it. "I never thought I wouldn't live," I bed. "Look, Jado, it's about Rigger Hall. And I think I need a sword. My hand won't get any stronger if I don't exercise it."

  "Christabel." His accent made it Ku-ris-ta-be-ru. "She was death-talker. Like you."

  With only four of us in the city, it stood to reason he would know. I looked down at my left hand, narrow and golden and graceful. His, brown and square, powerful, tendons standing out under the skin. "I don't think that's what killed her."

  A slight nod. "So, you have theory already."

  "No. Not even a breath of one. I've got a dead normal, a dead sexwitch, and a dead Necromance who left a little note about Rigger Hall. That's all I've got." I think it might be ritual murder, but I'm not sure. And until I'm sure, nobody's going to hear a theory from me, dammit.

  "And this means you need sword?" His eyebrow lifted. The kettle chirruped, and he poured the water into the bowls. I watched him whisk the fine green powder into frothy, bitter tea, his fingers moving with the skill of long practice. When my bowl was ready, he offered it with both hands. I took it in both hands, with a slight bow. Black raku glaze pebbled under my fingertips. The bowl still remembered the fire that made it strong; I caught the echo of flame even in the tea's strong, clear, tart taste.

  We are creatures of fire. Tierce Japhrimel's voice threaded through my memory, slow and silken. I was too busy keeping Jado from bashing me with a staff during sparring, but now the thought of Japh crept back into my head. I had managed a full half-hour, forty-five minutes without pain? Call the holovids, stop the presses, rent a holoboard, it was a banner event.

  No. I hadn't stopped thinking of him. I never stopped thinking of him. But he was really, truly, inevitably, finally gone.

  "I miss him," I said without meaning to, looking into the teabowl's depths. Now that I knew he wasn't in Death's hall, I could admit it. Maybe. "Isn't that strange."

  Jado shrugged, sipping at his own tea. His slanted charcoal eyes half-lidded, and the rumble of our strange paired contentment made the air thick and golden. "You have changed, Danyo-chan. I met you, and I saw it, so much anger. Where did anger go?"

  I shrugged. "I don't know." The anger isn't gone, Jado. I'm just better at hiding it. "I've been doing research on demons. And on A'nankhimel. Between bounties, that is." My mouth twisted into a bitter smile. I stared into the tea. "He never really told me what he did to me, or the price he paid for it. I still only have a faint idea—it's so hard to separate myth from reality in all the old books, and demons seem to delight in throwing red herrings across the trail." I realized what I was talking about, looked up. Jado examined the window with much apparent fascination.

  I sighed. "I used to work so hard at just staying alive, paying off my mortgage, just jumping from one rock to the next. Now I've crossed the river, and you know what? I wish I was back in the middle. At least while I was jumping I didn't have so much goddamn time to brood."

  Jado made a soft noise, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, just showing he was listening. Then his dark eyes swung away from the window and came to rest on me. "Perhaps would be best if you did not pursue your past, Danyo-chan."

  Remember Rigger Hall. "I'm not pursuing it. It's pursuing me. Now I have to find out what Christabel did at Rigger Hall, and what connection the three victims had."

  "Why?" He took the change of subject gracefully, of course. If anyone knew me, it was Jado. Even before Rio he had never treated me differently than any of his other students.

  How could an old man who wasn't human have made me feel so blessedly, thoroughly, completely human myself? "There's only three Necromances left in the city. Me, Gabe, and John Fairlane. We can't afford to lose any more." Bitter humor traced through my voice, etching acid on a pane of glass.

  Jado snorted a laugh as if steam was coming through his nose. "Come, drink your tea. We will find you sword. I think I know which one."

  The room at the head of the stairs was just as I remembered. Dying sunlight fell through the unshielded windows, slanting to strike at the polished wooden floor. Dust swirled in sinuous shapes with long frilled wings. The door had been taken off its hinges, a long fall of amber silk taking its place. The silk rippled and sang to itself in the silence.

  On the black wooden racks against the wall the swords lay, each humming in its sheath. I glanced down to the space where my sword had hung; it was empty. There were four empty spaces—four of Jado's students, out in the world. I wondered if any of the others had broken their sword in the heart of a demon.

  The thought managed to make me feel ashamed. Jado didn't hand swords out to just anyone, and I'd broken the last one. "Sensei," I whispered, "is it really right?"

  He laughed, a papery sound in the bare room. There were two tatami in the middle of the floor, and he gestured me to one. I folded myself down as his thick-skinned bare feet scraped against the floor. An unlit white candle in a plain porcelain holder sat off-center between the mats. "Ai, even swords come and go. You used Flying Silk well. But now, something else." He paced in front of the swords, their wrapped hilts ticking off space behind him. His long orange robe made a different sound than the silk in the door, I could hear the rattlewhine of faraway hovertraffic. It was soothing.

  I eased down onto my knees on the mat, tucking my feet under me. It was quiet here; even the dust was serene. My shoulder settled back into a burning prickle, like a limb slowly waking up. I inhaled, smelling Jado's fiery smell, and wished, as I often did, that I could stay with him. It wouldn't work—he was old and liked his space, and my own neuroses would probably irritate both of us to the point of murder after a while. But when I stepped over Jado's threshold, I was no longer a psion feared by normals, or a Necromance crippled by fear and a clawed hand. I was no longer even a hedaira, something that wasn't even alluded to directly in the old books about demons I'd managed to dig up. Here, in this house, I was only a student.

  And here, I was valued for myself alone. My skill, my bravery, my honor, my willingness to learn all he could teach me.

  "This one." Jado lifted down a longer katana. It was in a black-lacquered reinforced scabbard, probably made by Jado's own hands. The wrapping on the hilt was exquisite, and I saw a faint shimmer in the air surrounding it. I found myself holding my breath.

  The first time I had stepped into the dojo after killing Santino my breath had come short, my heart pounding; my palms had not been wet but my right hand had twisted into a painful knotted cramp. Jado had been teaching a group of rich teenagers t'ai chi as part of the federal health regimen. I'd waited in the back, respectfully; when class was finished and the young ones gone, he had stalked across the tatami and, without a word, took my right hand and examined it, moving the fingers gently. I let him, even though I couldn't stand to let anyone else touch me, shying away from even Jace's unconscious skin when he happened to collapse on the couch in an inebriated haze.

  Then Jado had grunted. No sword yet. Staff. Come. That simply, my nervousness had fallen away like an old coat. An hour later I had dragged myself sweating and shaking to the water fountain after a hard workout; it took a lot more to make me sweat now, but he'd done it. And that, apparently, was that.

  No other man could make me feel so much like a child. If Lewis was the father of my childhood, Jado was the father of the adult I had become. I hoped I'd made them proud.

  Jado settled down cross-legged across from me. His thumb flicked against the guard, and three inches of steel leapt free. It was beautiful, slightly longer and wider than my other sword. The steel rippled with a light all its own. "Very old. For some reason, Danyo-chan, you delight the very old. This—" He slid the blade home with a click, "—is Fudoshin."

  The candle between us guttered into life, a puff of smoke rising briefly before the flame steadied. I smiled at the trick, pretending not to notice, my eyes fixed on the sword.

  I tilted forward slightly, a bow expressed more with my
eyes and upturned hands than anything else, looking up to meet Jado's eyes. "Exquisite."

  He nodded slowly, his bald head gleaming with reflected sunlight. The candle's gleam was weak and pallid in the brightness of day. "You delight my heart, Danyo-chan. Fudoshin has been with me very long time. He is very old, and very much honor. But I tell you, it is not very good to give this sword."

  More time ticked by, the swords singing their long slow song of metal inside their sheaths. Jado breathed, his eyes dark but lit with pinpricks of orange light, his gaze soft as if he was remembering something very long ago.

  I always knew Jado wasn't human, but he hadn't truly frightened me until the first time I'd sat across from him in this room. His stillness had been absolute, not the dozing stillness of a human, but a trance so deep it was like alertness. Now I wasn't only human either, and I found myself copying his watchful silence, as if we were two mirrors reflecting each other into eternity.

  Finally, Jado drew in a breath, as if wrapping up some long conversation with himself. "Fudo Myoo is the great swordsman. He breaks the chains of suffering, lives in fiery heart of every swordsman. Fudoshin is dangerous, very powerful sword. He must be wielded with honor, but more important, with compassion. Compassion is not your strongest virtue, Danyo-chan. This sword loves battle." He looked up at me, his seamed face suddenly seeming old. "So do you, I think."

  I shook my head. A strand of hair fell in my face. "I don't fight without reason, sensei. I never have."

  He nodded. "Just so, just so. Still, I give you caution, you are young. Will ignore me."

  "Never, sensei." I managed to sound shocked.

  That made his face crinkle in a very wide, white-toothed grin. He offered the sword again, and this time I held my hands out, let him lay the almost-instantly familiar weight in my slightly cupped palms. I felt a shock of lightness burn through me, a welcome jolt not from my shoulder but from the pleasure of holding something so well-made, something intended for me. "Fudoshin," I whispered. Then I bowed, very low, over the blade. It seemed right, even though my braid fell forward over my shoulder and swayed dangerously close to the candle-flame. "D'mo, sensei." My accent mangled it, but his loud laugh rewarded me. I straightened, balancing the sword, already longing to slide the blade free and see that gleaming blue shine again. Longing to hear the slight deadly hiss as I freed it from the sheath, the soft whistling song of a keen blade cleaving the air.

  Jado's laugh ended in a small, fiery snort. "Ai, my knees ache. Ceremony bores me. Come, let me see if you can still perform first kata."

  "It would take more than a few months for me to forget that, sensei," I told him. It felt so good to hold a sword again. Complete. Right.

  "It always takes long time, forgetting anything painful." He nodded sagely, and my eyes met his. We both bowed to each other again, and I surprised myself by laughing when he did.

  Chapter Eleven

  I wasn't paying much attention as I rounded the corner, still loose and easy and smelling of healthy effort. I'd kept my house, and bought the two houses on either side with some of the blood money from the Santino bounty. Knocking the two houses down and building a wall around my place was the best step I ever took for privacy. I'd gotten the idea from Gabe. She inherited her private walls, I had to build my own.

  My left shoulder burned with steady hot pain. I wondered if the mark would start to eat at my skin, and the last of my good mood fled.

  Lucifer, maybe? What are the chances that he's involved in this mess? But no, there was no smell of demon on Christabel. I'm fairly sure I'd smell that. And this is too much gore for a demon, not even Santino was this messy.

  Still, thinking about the Prince of Hell made a slight, rippling chill go up my back. It was fairly obvious he was still keeping an eye on me, for what purpose I didn't like to guess.

  Screw Lucifer. He can wait until I've found out who's killing psions.

  A click alerted me. I didn't stop, but my shields thinned, and I felt the hungry mood circling my front gate. The defenses on my walls sparked and glittered. The curtain of Power would short out any holovid receiver that got too close.

  Oh, damn. Reporters.

  They hadn't noticed me yet. The click I'd heard was someone tucked behind a streetlamp, taking stills of my walls. His back was to me, sloping under a tan trench coat, uncoordinated dark hair standing up. Purple dusk was falling, and bright lights began to switch on. He was a normal, and therefore blind to the eddies and swirls I caused in the landscape of Power.

  I stood aside in shadow, melding with a neighbor's laurel hedge, and watched them for a few minutes. Holovids, I thought, blankly. What the hell do they want with me? Oh, yeah. Sekhmet sa'es, who tipped them off? Less than twenty-four hours on the case and there's already a leak. Wonderful. Perfect. Great.

  My knuckles whitened against the swordhilt. The sword was a slightly-heavier katana, a beautiful, curving, deadly blade in its reinforced black-lacquered scabbard, older than the Parapsychic Act. I had expected it to feel strange to hold a sword again. I'd expected my right hand to cramp and seize up.

  It didn't. In fact, it felt more natural than ever to curl my fingers around the hilt. Natural, and painless. I could pull the blade free of the sheath in one motion.

  It's not my sword yet. My fingers eased up a little. It would take time and Power before the blade would respond like my old sword had, made into a psychic weapon as much as a physical one.

  A lance of exquisite pain through my fingers made my hand spasm around the hilt. I drew in a soft breath, watching the holovid reporters circle in front of my gate, their klieg lights blaring, trying to get a good shot of my house. No hovers—they must have gotten some aerial shots already. Jace. Had he managed to slip inside unseen?

  I finally cut through someone's weedy front yard and down the dirt-packed alley that had marked my neighbor's property line before I'd bought the place. No reporters back here yet, thank the gods.

  My shields quivered, straining. I stopped, staring at my wall; the layers of energy I'd warded it with were flushing and pulsating a deep crimson. Demon-laid shields, Necromance shields, layers that Jace had applied, of spiky Shaman darkness. I calmed the restive energy with a touch and felt Jace inside, his sudden attention stinging against my receptive mind.

  It was a bit of work to scale the wall; I'd contracted one of the best construction guys in the city to make it smooth concrete, aesthetic razor spikes standing up from the top. Demon-quick reflexes saved me; I hauled myself up and over with little trouble, my boots thudding down in the back garden. Water tinkled from a fountain, the smell of green growing things closing around me. I inhaled deeply, the air pressure changing—Jace's silent greeting, one psi to another.

  When I slid the back door open, stepping over a pile of flat slate tiles I planned on turning into divination rune-plates, he met me with a cup of coffee and a grim expression. He hadn't started drinking yet, but the night was young. I didn't stare at him only by an effort of will.

  "Hey," I managed. "Looks like we've got company."

  "Oh, yeah. Fucking vultures." His lip curled. Mob freelancers hate reporters a little more than the rest of us, and Jace was no exception. There's a reason why psis don't work for the holovids.

  Well, besides the obvious fact that they would never hire a psionic actor or talking head. It was illegal to discriminate—but the natural antipathy we felt for the way we were shown on the holovids, mixed with the reluctance of the studio heads to put a psion on the air and lose a chunk of Ludder ratings, equaled no psionic actors. Status quo, just like usual.

  "Nice sword." That was as close to a comment as Jace would allow himself.

  I shrugged. "Thought it was time I started practicing again. How'd you make out?"

  A sudden grin lit his face. "Pulled a few old strings, visited a few old friends. Got you the invite, for tonight. You can take a servant with you, it says. Need me?"

  I actually considered it for a few moments, then looked at h
im. There were fine lines at the corners of his eyes, his mouth was pulled into a straight line, and he was bleary-eyed from too much Chivas, too many bounties, and not enough sleep. His clothes were rumpled, and I saw a shadow of stubble along his jaw. It occurred to me that my friends were getting older.

  And I looked just the same, when I could bring myself to glance in the mirror. Golden skin and dark eyes, and a demon's beauty. A gift I'd neither wanted nor asked for.

  I shook my head. "I need you to research for me, remember?" Even my hair shifted uneasily; the vision of Jace walking into the House of Pain was enough to make me shiver. I wasn't sanguine about going in there myself.

  Despite the fact that nonhuman paranormals had legal rights and voting blocs, they still didn't like to get too chummy with humans. I didn't blame them. "I need to know a couple of things, and you're just the man to find out."

  He folded his arms, his tattoo thorn-twisting on his unshaven cheek. "You are a spectacularly bad liar, once someone knows you," he informed me flatly.

  "What?" Now I was feeling defensive, and I hadn't even gotten ten feet inside my own back door yet. The papers lying on the closer end of my kitchen counter stirred uneasily, whispering. I wondered if there was another parchment envelope in today's mail.

  Pushed the thought away. Jace, for the sake of every god that ever was, please don't ask to go to the House of Pain. I worry enough about you on regular bounties. I closed my lips over the words, swallowed them. That was the surest way to piss him off, implying that he was less than capable.

  He planted his booted feet and regarded me with the cocky half-smile meaning he was on the verge of irritation. "I won't break, Danny. I've seen worse than this, and I know how to take care of myself. Quit treating me like I'm second-class, all right?"