“I don’t think so,” Shin said in a low voice.
“That’s because he put the fear into you,” the woman sneered.
But someone else came to his aid, saying, “I don’t think so, either.” He meant that he agreed with Shin—it was Twin. “It might rub you folks the wrong way, but it’d be a lot safer if we all took him on at once. Underestimate him and you’ll only meet a quick death.”
“I’ll try to ignore your lack of experience, but kindly refrain from making such broad pronouncements,” the woman said, her voice like a thorn—a thorn dripping with poison. “At any rate, our little pact of unity is at an end. I’m going to do as I please,” she added.
“Me, too,” the owner of the deep voice concurred. He then asked, “What’ll you do, Gyohki?”
There was no immediate reply, but after a while a strangely lisping and panting answer came. “I’ll claim it all. His life, the bead—everything.”
“Then it’s decided,” said the man—who could only be Egbert.
“How interesting! Don’t come complaining to us if one of the others bumps you off, Twin and Shin.” Laughing, the woman added, “That leaves just the boy and the old man. Perhaps you can sit around and discuss your retirement. But let me make it perfectly clear that if either of you even thinks of pulling something before we’re done—”
“I know, I know,” Shin said. “We won’t try anything until you’ve taken him out of the picture. That is, if you can take him out.”
“This should be rich!” said Twin, his subsequent laughter rocking the room. “Okay, give it your best shot. Once the rest of you are done, me and Shin will move in. At least try to leave a few marks on him, will you?”
“Well, shall we go? We can leave word back here.”
And with that solemn voice as a cue, every last sound ceased. It was evident that all five of the villains had flown from their meeting place without letting any of their compatriots ever see them, and each embraced their own dangerous thoughts.
Although the dull sunlight dribbled through the clouds in the late afternoon to illuminate every last corner of the village, the air and wind remained sharp enough to cut into the flesh. But that same chill air rang high and low with a jubilant pounding and the sound of hammers making preparations for the summer festival, which was set to begin in a few short days.
D and Su-In heard the ruckus from the top of the truck as they headed toward the shops in town. Because the engine was acting up, the truck was being pulled by a pair of cyborg horses. It was hard to imagine that summer would be there soon—despite the fact that it was already in full swing in many other parts of the Frontier. Nevertheless, the sounds of the work seemed to stir up that summertime feel.
Su-In sat beside D as he held the reins, and her face was as dark and gray as the sea. At the moment, she was headed out to buy the things she’d need for her grandfather’s funeral and to file the paperwork for his death certificate. The cause of death was drowning, but they knew who’d arranged for it to happen. Ordinarily, that was information they’d give to the sheriff. But it was Su-In’s decision not to do so. The enemy was after a single bead. Getting others involved would only cause her more misgivings, and with the festival so close, there was reason to fear the trouble could spread through the whole village. The sheriff would be certain to request the assistance of the Vigilance Committee and the Youth Corps. Relying only on D and herself, Su-In was determined that the two of them alone could meet the threat posed by their attackers when they came.
The real problem was Dwight, but she’d eventually persuaded him. Not only was he head of the local Youth Corps, but he’d known Su-In all her life and was madly in love with her. When she’d asked him not to mention it to anyone else, he’d become belligerent. But a threat of never having anything to do with him ever again finally got his grudging consent.
However, there was no guarantee that word wouldn’t get out eventually—it was a small village. Strange rumors got around quickly, and when the woman had gone to pick up the remains, there was certainly somebody that’d seen D with her and was certain to start whispering about it. Though she’d introduced him as an acquaintance of Wu-Lin’s who’d be working for her for a while, it was too much to expect even the simplest rustic to believe a woman who’d barely turned twenty would be taking in a gorgeous young man with an eerie aura as an ordinary laborer. All she could do was accept that some loss of reputation and a certain amount of talk behind her back were unavoidable.
Her grandfather’s corpse was brought back to their barn, and the doctor raced over to examine it. The wake would be that night, and the funeral was the following day.
Coughing with the cold air as she breathed in, the woman suddenly felt relief and warmth shining into her heart like a thin ray of sunlight, thanks to simply having D there silently driving the vehicle. It wasn’t something the average person could’ve made her feel. So beautiful he seemed shaped by a genius or by the heavenly creator himself, his body shrouded in a daunting aura, so cultured he seemed like a Noble—as they were going to get her grandfather’s remains, she’d wanted him to make it clear he was actually a dhampir, but there was something about the elegant form of this young man in black that was far beyond the ken of ordinary people like herself. There was something entirely different about him.
His form was as human as Su-In’s own, but he was steeped in an air of mystery beyond her or any other human’s imagining—an air that could be felt merely by being near him. For that very reason, many dhampirs didn’t let anyone else get close to them. Warriors and bodyguards who traveled around selling their services were the same way. Su-In knew just from those who’d visited the village in the past that they had what could almost be called a stern disregard for everyone else. While this young man proved far more solitary and aloof than the others had been, for some reason the mere thought of him by her side brightened her psyche, which was otherwise ready to plunge into despair, and made her feel she might just be able to go on another day.
“Have you settled down some?”
Finding herself on the receiving end of this abrupt query, Su-In hurriedly focused herself back on the present. “Yeah. Somewhat.”
“Now that I’m working for you, could you tell me the story behind the bead?”
“Sure,” Su-In replied with a nod, gazing out at the vast expanse of sea to her right. “Most of what I know I heard from my grandfather. I already told you this whole area used to be a hunting ground for the Nobility, right? That was over a thousand years ago. Back in those days, it seems even the northern Frontier was managed by the weather controllers, and they could make it warmer or pleasantly cool. The Nobles’ homes—or rather, their lodges—weren’t just in the woods we passed through last night; they covered the whole area around here. If we hadn’t turned toward the village on that road last night but kept going straight, we would’ve come to the spot where the most extravagant homes were. There’s not much to see there now, but it’s more than enough to convey how lavish it must’ve been way back when. Rumor has it that there are underground factories out there still running.
“Do you know what the Nobility did when they wanted to play here? They went sailing on yachts powered by wind or by light waves, or went walking through the sea in submersible spheres. If you go out around the cape, you can still see the remains of an undersea observatory. But the cruelest and craziest thing they did was to cause widespread mutations in the sea creatures. They scattered food and drugs designed to alter the animals’ DNA over thousands of nautical miles. For the Nobility, it was a simple enough task. Even now you can go to the room of records at the temple and see data captured by the Nobility back then, although it’s forbidden to call up any of the holographic images they have. You see, a number of people have been driven mad by them.
“I’ve only seen photos myself, but there were some incredible things—it’s almost impossible to believe there were ever things like that in our own sea. Giant stingrays that were each s
ix miles wide, barracudas that could swallow three white whales whole . . . When you think of plankton, nothing comes to mind but whale food. But after the Nobility got their hands on them, they were huge, ravenous monsters that could take a big school of seven-foot tuna right down to the bone. There’s this one picture where the whole sea—out to the horizon, or even further—is just covered with them. The Nobility used to get into transparent globes that no tooth could even scratch and drink their wine as they watched these creatures tearing into each other. I suppose you know what their wine was flavored with.”
“And have humans lived here ever since?” D asked. His tone hadn’t been affected at all by the horrible tales he’d just heard.
“It seems they were brought here at the same time the Nobility opened their resort. All the manual labor was done by robots, but it appears that for some of the finer touches they just couldn’t beat human servants. Having more obedient human servants than anyone else was quite a status symbol for the local Nobility. The humans had a number of other uses as well. I’m sure you know all about that, too.
“After a while, the Nobles took all the humans except for a few servants and put them in one place. And then, after giving them the least amount of support possible, they began preying on their former slaves each and every night. In other words, their greatest joy came from draining the blood from humans who fought back. It turns out they’d realized how boring it was to bite into the throat of humans they kept locked up in dungeons or ones who did their every bidding thanks to sorcery or brain surgery. Making it so that the humans couldn’t leave the area they’d been assigned was child’s play for the Nobility. And they just left the humans they’d fed on right there. They’d be found by their fellow humans, who’d hammer a stake through the victim’s heart—one theory has it that the Nobility derived their greatest satisfaction from hearing that pounding and those screams as they closed the lids to their coffins. Whenever the population fell, they could always have as many humans as they liked sent from the Capital. According to the records, it seems that over the course of a decade, the community was completely emptied five times.
“I’m sure you’ve seen with your own eyes the beauty and magnificence of the civilization the Nobility left behind. Exquisite gardens that glittered in the moonlight, dreamily blazing torches soaked in perfume, lodges built of silver birch and crystal, and people in white dresses and black capes roaming the cobblestone streets with neither a sound nor a shadow—why would any species that’d learned to live in such splendor need to drink the blood of humans? When it was time to repaint their vacation homes, why was it the fresh blood of humans they had to use? Why did they have to cut the heads off a thousand people and toss them into the sea to summon their monstrous fish? I wonder if the beauty of a civilization can be completely unrelated to the moral character of the race that created it.
“But one day, an end came suddenly to that age of beauty and cruelty. In no time at all—legend has it it happened over the course of a single night—the Nobility vanished completely. No one knows why. Some scholars attribute it to the weather controller malfunctioning, but it’s been proven those problems didn’t start until much later. At the very least, it was even later that this area was plunged into freezing cold, which caused the mutated creatures to vanish from the seas and left them choked with icebergs. And that was when humans started living here on their own.”
“Aren’t there any legends about what happened?” D asked. He was also looking out at the sea.
A number of power boats were skipping across the white waves, leaving thin trails in the water behind them as they moved toward the horizon. Beyond them was the hazy black outline of what seemed to be the back of some creature.
“Part of the Nobility’s heritage—a tidal whale,” Su-In remarked. “They’re seven hundred feet long, and just one of them could support the whole village for six months. We can eat the meat, use the blubber for making wax, insulating coatings, kerosene, and fuel for our cars, and we can use the bones for handicrafts and to make special medicines to treat asthma and scurvy. And ‘essence of dragon tongue’—an extract of marine flora and fauna that collects in their intestines—makes a perfume more suited to the Nobility than the housewives who live in the Capital these days. The village will be pretty busy up until the summer festival. I’ve got to do all that I can, too. D, I’ll really need you to watch my back.”
Here Su-In took a breath. Closing her eyes, she dug deep into her memories. “This is how the legend goes. One day, a man with more power than even the Nobility came on a ship, brought all the Nobles together in the square, and upbraided them for their cruel misdeeds. When the angry Nobles mounted their battle chariots and charged the man, he not only blew away their war machines but also ripped their very homes from the ground with a single flourish of his cape. It’s said that the frightened Nobility, with one exception, all fled the area then.”
“And that one exception?”
“His name was Baron Meinster. He was the administrator of this region and the very worst of the Greater Nobility, the blackest cancer Noble blood ever produced—in fact, there are records that show making the sea creatures monstrously large and the ‘game’ of putting all the humans in one place so the Nobles could feed on them were both his ideas. A truly loathsome portrait of him survived. And letters have been preserved where his fellow Nobles wrote to acquaintances in the Capital, telling them not to go to his home if invited because even Nobility were known to enter and never come out again. At any rate, he alone defied the commands of the mighty traveler. The battle came the day after the other Nobles left, and it took place at Meinster’s castle. After a conflict that reduced the homes of the Nobles to rubble instantly, wiped out all animal life, and even changed the shape of mountains, Meinster was defeated and his corpse was cast into the sea for all eternity after measures had been taken to ensure he would never return to dry land again. It’s said that even now he prowls the bottom of the deep sea with arms folded, coming up at times to bask in the moonlight and take his sustenance, plotting his return to the land and vengeance against the traveler in black. But that last part is nothing more than legend.
“Oh, that’s right—there was one other horrible business Meinster was involved in while he was still alive. Not long after some of the inhabitants disappeared from the community where the Nobles confined them, strange creatures were found in the bay or inlets. The shape of them wasn’t entirely human or animal, and they were all shriveled up but still alive, or a torso that still lived without its head, or sometimes it would be the opposite and there’d be just a hand that would grab people by the leg while the severed head was a little ways off gnashing its teeth and screaming for help. All of them still bore some resemblance to people who’d gone missing. You could chop them up and apparently it still wouldn’t kill them, but if you put them in the sunlight they’d dissolve. The reason they knew that Meinster was responsible for this was because a number of those people had been seen dragged into his castle. Because the images they’d conjure up were just too horrible, no one ever spoke of what happened up there, but we can guess.
“But thanks to the legendary traveler in black, that never happened again, either. The story goes that after that, he wiped out almost all the sea monsters so that humans could dwell near the shore, and he released the people from the Nobility’s control before he left. Ultimately, we never did learn who he was or where he was from. Say, D—you don’t suppose he was some relative of yours or something, do you?” Su-In said, gazing at the Hunter’s profile with a rare look of childlike mischief in her eyes.
As always, he was cold as steel. And yet, feeling as if she’d said something completely inappropriate, Su-In quickly faced forward again.
Not seeming to mind at all, D said, “Yet there’s a Noble here. Is it this Baron Meinster?”
“No, his face is—different.”
“When did the attacks start?”
Casting her eyes down, Su-In replied,
“Three years ago.”
“Who is it, and where does he dwell?”
“I don’t know. But—” Su-In continued hesitantly, “well, I can tell you for sure that everyone who’s been attacked lived near the beach. Seaweed and salt water were always found at the scene. That’s why everyone in the village says . . .”
“It’s Meinster’s revenge?” D ventured casually. Then, quietly turning to face Su-In, he asked, “It’s that illusion we saw in the tunnel, isn’t it?”
It took some time before Su-In finally nodded.
—
III
—
“But you say it’s not Meinster?” the Hunter asked.
“If you’ll look at the portrait of him in our records, you’ll see.”
“And why did he appear to you?”
“It wasn’t necessarily me,” the woman replied. “It could be he sensed you. And we had that priest with us, too. Nobles have this psychic ability to sniff out their enemies, right?”
“Only a small portion of them.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s part of that group, then.”
“And you say he suddenly showed up three years ago?” said D.
“Yeah.”
“Any idea why that is?”
“No.”
“What do they say around town?”
“No one has any idea, it seems.”
“And has there been anything unusual about the sea?”
Averting her gaze, Su-In said, “Yeah,” again. “At the very same time, fatalities tripled out there.”
That meant the sea had become three times as dangerous.
“Have protective measures been taken?”
Mysterious Journey to the North Sea, Part 1 Page 10