A Taint in the Blood

by S. M. Stirling

  “Master Hajime, I have come to your territory only because—”

  I must speak as he expects. In his terms, it is true.

  “—because what is mine has been stolen from me. This is not a matter of Council and Brotherhood. I renounced the war long ago, and would have stayed in my own house if left alone. My sister Adrienne came to my territory and took a woman of my household to California. And now somewhere in the vicinity of this city; I can feel it through our link.”

  And nobody of your generation among Shadowspawn likes Adrienne—that I know of, he thought.

  Hajime shrugged his shoulders; the cloth of the kimono’s layers rustled.

  “What is one human?” His voice went taut with venom. “The earth swarms with them. Adrienne has the leave of my granddaughter Michiko to come and go here, and to use the properties we left to the Brézés.”

  “I resigned from the war, Master. I did not become less than a man. The woman was mine, on my ground.”

  He thought he saw a slight flicker of respect in the blank gold eyes. When Hajime spoke, the voice was still cold:

  “And you killed blood of my blood. The peace agreement specified that no Brézé would enter the city without permission. You have no such leave. You came, you killed.”

  “Only to defend my life,” Adrian said calmly.

  “That is not what my granddaughter says. She says that she sent her cousins to observe you, when you intruded without leave.”

  “That is not how I perceived it,” Adrian said carefully.

  Do not, do not, do not accuse his well-loved granddaughter of lying!

  “I merely defended myself. My birth-body is still lying badly wounded by warded silver-blades.”

  Silence stretched. “A man will strive to protect his own, even if it is only his own dog,” the Master said at last, grudgingly. “I will therefore forgive the intrusion. Provided that you leave immediately, and give up this mercenary Harvey Ledbetter, the ape who dared to kill his betters. You did badly to bring him into contention between us. He is of the Brotherhood, and under sentence of slow death.”

  Adrian swallowed. “In honor I cannot yield either the woman, or the man who assisted me—”

  “What do you know of honor?” Hajime spat. “I am the twenty-fifth head of my clan. We Wrought with the Power long before the Order sent its missionaries to Japan. Before Meiji, before the West. Great lords went in fear of us, paid us tribute, sought our aid in their wars.”

  Little Wreakings. The sort of thing Harvey can manage, Adrian thought behind his shields. Until the Order of the Black Dawn went looking for its equivalents in every country of earth, to teach them how to reconstitute the genome.

  The old man went on bitterly: “What are the Brézés but the heirs of a secret cult? Yes, you stumbled across valuable knowledge. That did not prevent us from taking this territory from your line twenty years ago, and its Council seat. And now you stand here asking the favor of the man who killed your parents—”

  “Only their birth-bodies, Master. They live yet, undying, as you do.”

  And I would like nothing better than giving them the final death!

  “—against your own sister! Go. Count yourself lucky I do not demand blood for blood.”

  “I must have the woman, and I will not yield the man. Give me this, Master, I beg. Then I will leave and cause no more trouble for you and yours.”

  Hajime looked at him expressionlessly. Events trembled on a precipice of might-be.

  Remember that you hate Adrienne and her corruption of all tradition. That you fear she plots Brézé revenge for the West Coast coup. Know that I have no such ambitions. That you dislike her influence on your favorite granddaughter.

  He could feel the balances shifting towards him, like the weight of his own body on the parallel bars. Then he whirled, grappling with the push of the Power. For a moment he was blinded, the keening, whining snarl of Mhabrogast echoing in the ears of his mind. The moment toppled from his fingers, slipping away from potential to certainty.

  “You say must to me! Ebisu! Kokuzoku! ” Hajime spat.

  The hand darted to the hilt of the katana and the blade came free in a hurtful dazzle. Adrian threw himself backward, and his body flowed as the clothes fell free. When it landed it was on all fours. Hajime’s eyes went wide, and his followers froze for an instant with their knives half-drawn. The form that faced them was twice the weight of a lion, a spotted tawny bulk whose fangs curved nine inches from its upper jaw. They gaped in a killing scream as the lower mandible dropped out of the path of the stabbing canines.

  Bless reconstitutive DNA technology, he thought, in some corner of his mind that was still human—or hominid.

  The rest of it blazed with the fury of the great killer, with the wealth of scent and sight that poured in through senses keener than even his own breed possessed. A racking scream rose into a deep full-throated roar, and the stump tail on the powerful hindquarters quivered. He leapt—and twisted in midair to avoid the long slash of the sword. That brought him down between the two corporeals. A plate-broad paw sent one spinning to crash into a tree five yards away, clutching at his rent stomach and shrieking in pain. The other threw himself flat and slashed. The scent of Shadowspawn blood filled the air, stronger and ranker than human, driving him to frenzy.

  Adrian dodged with more than human—more than Shadowspawn—speed. The silver edge of the knife struck hairs from the ruff around the smilodon’s neck. They sparkled into nonexistence as they separated from the energy-web of the night-walking body; he could feel the cold shock up and down his spine and into his skull. His strike cracked the arm behind the weapon, but he leapt again a fractional second ahead of Hajime’s blade.

  The old man was fearless; he was even smiling grimly as he took stance, straddle-legged and katana up in the classic position.

  “I will not assume the tiger,” he said. “Only the kami know how you took the spirit of that beast into you. Come!”

  Actually I took in its DNA after the Brotherhood used my money to finance a reconstruction, the distant part of his mind that thought in language gibed.

  The sabertooth crouched and snarled again, coming forward with one huge paw placed at a time. Faster, faster, a bunching of hindquarters, the leap with forepaws outstretched and jaws open to a hundred and twenty degrees for the killing stab—

  He twisted just in time, writhing in midair as the whistle of cloven air warned him. Even so the impact was stunning—the raptor stooped at fifty miles an hour, an eagle whose body was the size of a collie. The tiger-sized claws slammed agonizingly into his ribs instead of puncturing spine and skull. The five-foot bird’s great curved beak raked down his side, probing for the soft belly, and wings twice man-height long hammered at his muzzle.

  The smilodon rolled, squalling and striking. The eagle leapt free . . . and flowed. The black tiger wasn’t as large as the sabertooth, but it was a blur in the night. Paws rammed back and forth as the predators reared and shrieked and struck. Adrian jinked desperately as he felt the sword approach again.

  There was no possibility of fighting both these enemies at once; the Power flashed the knowledge into his inner selfhood, as he felt their minds striving to lock his paths dark. Only one choice did not end in his final death. Mind and body followed it with desperate precision—

  Back. Back. Then up. He flowed again, and wings caught at the air.

  Harv! he called, with agonized strength. Get my body moving!

  Adrienne Brézé pulled the borrowed coat around herself and bowed deeply, keeping the smile off her face.

  “Konbanwa, Tōkairin-sama,” she said politely. “Good evening, Lord Tōkairin.”

  “Good evening, Miss Brézé. My thanks to you,” Tōkairin Hajime said gruffly, switching the conversation into English. “I will not say that you saved my life. You tried to do so, though, and may well have saved the lives of my men, who are of my family. I am under obligation to you.”

  What he really means is
giri, Adrienne thought. Something rather more serious. Which is exactly what I had in mind. Besides keeping Adrian from spitting himself on that sword.

  The ambulance bearing his wounded men howled away; the police were examining the surroundings in increasing puzzlement. The night-walkers were as imperceptible as shadows to them, as long as they willed it.

  “Dômo arigatô gozaimasu,” Adrienne said, and bowed again. “I am your granddaughter’s guest, and therefore your guest. It is also a disgrace to my family that the traitor acts so, in violation of our solemn agreements. On both accounts I was obliged to do whatever I could.”

  Both the thank-you and the gesture were in the extreme polite form, the one used mainly by women in Japan when Hajime was a young man. She could see the very slightest relaxation in the stiffness of the Tōkairin clan-head.

  “I am obliged,” he repeated.

  “I will, of course, leave San Francisco immediately, for Brézé possessions or neutral land,” Adrienne said. “I am deeply ashamed of how I have brought a Brézé family dispute onto Tōkairin home territory. What must you think of me! I’ll begin packing and close down the town house you so kindly allowed us to secure after the . . . readjustment.”

  “You will do nothing of the sort!” Hajime said. “I will not allow an outlaw to drive out a guest of my family! Besides which, all the West Coast is in a sense Tōkairin territory, even if not under our direct control. Our patronage extends over all Shadowspawn in the area. We represent them on the Council of Shadows.”

  “Very true, Master Hajime,” Adrienne said. “But I would not dream of causing you the slightest inconvenience. I was only visiting here for social reasons. Shopping, and so forth. Women’s matters. And to visit with Michiko-san, of course.”

  He snorted. “And you will stay and amuse yourself as you please for as long as you please. Whether by shopping or hunting . . . What about this woman your outlaw brother claimed you took from him, by the way?”

  Adrienne made a graceful gesture. “He never even fed from her, Master. She was running wild when I acquired her, not under his control at all. I do not think he considered her in his possession.”

  She let her shields drop enough that he could read her for an instant. Intent-to-deceive was the easiest emotion to sense, and she was being honest both in form and spirit. Allowing your own thoughts to be tasted was a great concession among their kind. He nodded as her screen went up again.

  “And . . . well, Michiko has kindly invited me to hunt and feed as I will here, but I thought it would be more polite to bring . . .”

  She let the remark trail off. Hajime nodded. “Very polite,” he said, and now his voice was a little impressed.

  Not the idea you had of me at all, is it, you costumed dinosaur? Adrienne thought behind her smiling mask. I’m so demurely respectful that only the possibility of projectile vomiting endangers my manners.

  “Even excessively polite,” he said. “I wouldn’t have it rumored that Tōkairin hospitality is grudging. And these swarming American mongrels are so many that killing a few is a service to us, not a burden.”

  “Michiko was kind enough to say the same, but, of course, from yourself I must accept with thanks.”

  He nodded. “Go. I insist that you send to me immediately if you have more trouble with this renegade. Here, or elsewhere in our province! The next time we meet him, we will deal with him. The man obviously knows no sense of decency or obligation at all. In which I begin to believe he is very unlike his sister.”

  “Dômo arigatô gozaimasu,” she said again. “How extremely kind of you.”

  “Dou itashimashite,” he said dismissively.

  Her smile was brilliant. “With your protection, Tōkairin-sama, I am sure he will be no trouble at all! And I’ve already enjoyed my visit very much. Very much indeed. You must allow me to return your hospitality in some small way soon.”

  He inclined his head. She bowed again—not so deeply as she had the previous two times, which could have been subtle insolence, but enough to show profound respect.

  Her body flowed once more as she straightened and let the coat fall, changing forms with a fluency he would find impressive in itself. The ten-foot wings of the giant eagle bore her upward with massive strokes that raised a circle of dust and litter for an instant. The slightest hint of cold fire in the east told her that she should seek the sheltering flesh soon, but she wheeled above the spire that bore the two setback stories of the Brézé town house for a few minutes anyway.

  Then she swooped in and landed; a canvas chair overturned with a clatter. A flowing, and she stood in her own form amid the chill silent darkness. Hearing and smell grew stronger, sight weaker; her mind raced for an instant as the fierce pinpoint focus of the raptor’s specialized intellect dropped away and her sense of self expanded into the larger hominid brain. With it came words:

  I’ve been having an extremely good time, she thought. With Michiko, with Adrian, and with you, Master Hajime. And not least with Adrian’s little lucy, while I waited for Adrian to be his usual bumblingly straightforward self. She made herself come out to me right over there only a few hours ago . . .

  Adrienne was singing softly as she leaned on the marble railing of the terrace and the stars wheeled around to midnight:

  “And we who hold high places

  Must be the ones who start

  To mold a new reality;

  Closer to the heart! ”

  Ellen climbed out of the heated pool, toweled down and wrapped the thick robe around herself. Then she filled her wineglass from the last of the bottle and walked out to join her. The Brézé town house was the uppermost two stories of the St. Regis Hotel tower, forty floors above the SoMa district near the access ramps to the Bay Bridge. It was the sort of apartment that had a two-story waterfall in the lobby and six fireplaces and twenty-two-foot glass walls in the living-room.

  She’d rapidly been losing her ability to be impressed by that sort of thing. Except . . .

  This is what Adrian could have had. No, it’s just a sample of what he could have had. An emperor’s life, including the power of life and death, and immortality with it. He could have been a god in shadow, and he chose—chooses every day—to give it up.

  More primal concerns crowded the thought out, and even the panorama of San Francisco’s hills jeweled with night, dark water defining the edge of the world and the East Bay cities glowing across it. She leaned on the railing beside the Shadowspawn and carefully set her small glass of wine on the marble; it was something called Tokaji Aszú 1924, which meant nothing to her, except that it tasted very nice and was rather sweet and hit like a toppling statue.

  “You’re a little drunk,” Adrienne said.

  She was naked and evidently perfectly comfortable that way despite the chilly wind that had dried her long black hair. She brushed feather-tufts of it back from her face as she turned her head.

  “I’m terrified, is what I am,” Ellen said.

  It had been surprisingly easy to learn there was no point in not talking to someone who could riffle through your mind like a search program through a computer.

  Through Ellen dot doc, she thought. Talk about being an open book! Aloud she went on:

  “So frightened I’d do anything to just make it stop. The booze helps a little,” she finished and took another small swallow.

  “Tsk, tsk, using that to drink just for effect . . . So what are you frightened of? Me?”

  “Always.”

  “Sensible girl. Frightened of Michiko?”

  “Fucking right I am! She wanted to kill me, didn’t she? That was what she was talking about. She’d be killing me right now if you’d let her. Killing me slowly and I’d know it every second of the way and she’d drink it. Oh, Christ.”

  She gripped the stone until the wave of hot-cold fear finished surging up from her abdomen, then washed across her face and receded.

  “Probably,” Adrienne said calmly as she sipped from her own glass. “In fac
t, she’s probably picking up someone as much like you as she can find to kill that way right now.”

  Ellen closed her eyes for an instant, struck with a sudden stab of unbearable pity for someone she’d never see or know. A girl who was just meeting dark gold-flecked eyes and a sharp white smile, whose story would end in a scream before the sun rose.

  “I think you gave her an itch she couldn’t scratch,” Adrienne said. “You have the most interesting mind.”

  “And I’m frightened of the world now. It isn’t the world I thought I was living in! As if suddenly I’d wandered onto another planet or another dimension or something.”

  “Like having the lid of the Abyss whipped out from under your feet?”

  Ellen nodded. “Finding out about you was bad enough. But tonight I really realized there’s a whole world of . . . of Shadowspawn out there. There always was, just a step or a thought or a chance away.”

  “You met Adrian on a tennis court. Which led to meeting me, of course.”

  She nodded again. “So one of you might have killed me anytime, like something walking out of a nightmare. One of the nightmares where you scream and scream and it doesn’t make any sound, and the thing drags you back to the basement to do stuff to you and everyone ignores you as if you weren’t there . . . and worst of all is that I know I can’t ever go back to the way things were on Wednesday. Because they weren’t actually that way, I just thought they were.”

  Adrienne chuckled. “A Greek philosopher once said that knowledge was the treasure nobody could take away from you. That’s not even literally true. I can make humans forget things. So can vodka or a ball-peen hammer! But it’s stupid even on its face. A wiser one said that no man can step twice into the same river, which translates as: You can’t get a lost illusion back.”

  Ellen nodded, finished the sweet wine, and took a deep shuddering breath.

  “What do you want?” she made herself say.

  “Everything, forever,” Adrienne said. “But you mean right now?”