Dragon's Run Page 15

  Rubbing his wrists, Yoshiaki wore a thin smile, a greedy film over his eyes. “Ink that obeys not the pen or the brush but desire. Create a work of art so beautiful, it will make a viewer weep in an afternoon, forge an entire contract with a wave of a pen.”

  “Just don’t make an ink sprite with it,” Mitsuo said.

  “I’m not stupid.” Yoshiaki bit his lip. “Fine, I’ll get you the silvered documents you need.”

  Mitsuo caught his shoulder as he rose from the table. “Make sure those docs are perfect. And not a word to Ryouta.”

  Annoyance flickered across Yoshiaki’s face. “That is covered under my previous statement. Don’t get caught. The ancestors will let you in without trouble. Make sure you figure out the rest.” He pulled away just as the server made it to their table with three teas. She briefly glanced between the three of them before setting the pot and two of the mugs down with a tiny shrug.

  The pair of them watched Yoshiaki’s back until he disappeared down the stairs. Yaki’s stomach felt unsettled. Mitsuo took a deep draught of tea, heedless of its heat, and smiled as Yaki imagined a coyote would. “See, no trouble at all. Have to follow up the stick with the carrot with Yosh.”

  Yaki frowned. “You’re positive he’s not going to blab it all to Ryouta the first chance he gets?”

  “Relax, I’ve been handling my cousin since he was five. Doing me little favors is a way of life for him. He won’t even think twice about it.”

  Yaki made her Lady Cat mask laugh for her, because her own heart wasn’t in it. His gloating made her feel dirty. She pushed the sensation back with an image of Ishe imprisoned and helpless within Yaz’noth’s caverns. She couldn’t let that happen to her sister, and if a few spoiled nobles suffered for Ishe’s sake, so be it. Not just that but… a small bit of the quicksilver for her own use wouldn’t be bad, either.

  “So, everything else is in place?” Yaki asked, wrenching her mind from the damage she’d leave in her wake to the heist itself, which seemed fun.

  His smile softened into something more mischievous than vicious, and Yaki liked that expression much more. “Not quite. A few more things I need to get, but that was the biggest obstacle. By the time he finishes those documents, I’ll have all the wrinkles smoothed out.” His eyes drifted down from her face, looking through her dress. “Got plans this afternoon?”

  “Hmmmm.” Yaki shifted sideways to present her figure. “I have to check on Bobcat this afternoon.” His mouth tightened at the mention of Bobcat. “But after dinner, I could be in a…playful mood.”

  He reached out and grasped her hand, thumb running over the back of her knuckles in a way that brought heat to her cheeks. Her eyes must have betrayed more than an inkling of interest, because he scooted his chair closer so they were nearly hip to hip. “Maybe you’re in a playful mood now?”

  With his touch, his handsome features loomed large in her mind. It had been a few days. She had left Gama and his friends in Grandma’s Willow’s garden with a promise to meet them there later; she hadn’t told them precisely when she’d check on them, had she? A part of her rolled with revulsion at the mere consideration, chiding herself for being so quick to brush away her guilt for squeezing the oily Yoshiaki. Yet another voice inside her countered that she had to keep Mitsuo on the hook, too. If he got jealous and went after Gama, he might realize that her own honesty had been very selective. Besides, it wasn’t as if she wouldn’t enjoy it. She reached around his back and laid her head on his shoulder. “I really shouldn’t; it would be terrible manners if I were to be late.”

  “Funny, I don’t recall you being particularly mannerly when we met.”

  The memory that recalled made her grin.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Give your ammo crystals to the Navy. Weapon crystals and the skill to use them are the marks of a true professional.

  Lord Signa, Lyndon bounty hunter

  The sun had edged toward evening by the time Yaki abandoned Mitsuo. She left him laying face-up on her sleeping mat, muttering something about lovely infernos as she felt almost sated. Certainly, she felt smug. Unfortunately, Gama’s hurt expression turned her buzz angry as soon as she saw it.

  Gama, along with Raiju and Chimon, were sitting on cushions around a low table in the boardinghouse’s common room when she came downstairs. All three had cleaned up a bit, but only Gama had changed his clothing. He’d discarded the beaded jacket for a more traditional flax tunic with simple diamond-shaped patterns embroidered along the seams of his shoulders and sleeves. All three looked up at her and glanced away quickly. Raiju and Chimon sniggered over something as she stalked up to them.

  “Why are you here, Bobcat?” Yaki made her voice like brittle ice. “Particularly with them.” If Mitsuo saw his classmates there, he’d ask questions that she really did not want him asking.

  Gama looked over his companions, and his expression told her he hadn’t been thinking about that at all. “You didn’t show at the garden and…” He trailed off and swallowed.

  “And everyone in the building knows why.” Chimon smirked, apparently unable to help himself. Raiju looked up at her angrily.

  Yaki huffed. “Get up, all of you. I expect you all to be more careful than this.”

  “Sorry,” Gama sighed; he stood, shoulders slumped. Yaki herded them all out the door, feeling Raiju’s eyes attempting to dig out holes in her back the whole way. Chimon’s sniggering was worse. By the time they were outside, Yaki was imagining Ishe picking them both up by the scruff of their necks and knocking their heads together.

  Yaki took Gama by the arm and growled in his ear, “Call off your friends or send them away before I hurt them.”

  “They’re not being that bad. You’re just hungry,” he murmured back. “And you stood us up.”

  “I have to keep Mitsuo happy and willing or this entire thing fails. Then my sister gets an internal organ ripped out by a dragon,” Yaki hissed back. “We’re friends, not lovers, for a good reason, Gama. Something you need to explain to Raiju and Chimon.” As she pulled her eyes off his, a cloud of dust caught her attention. Large pawprints appeared next to her footsteps.

  Oh, a tithe of iron on all the houses! What now? Yaki glanced back toward Chimon and Raiju, scanning the crowd behind them. Immediately, she noticed the head of the same tall woman who had attracted her gaze from the rooftop cafe. Her eyes were half-lidded, but Yaki could feel the woman’s attention, if not directly on her, in her direction.

  Gama was saying something. Yaki pulled him close. “We’re being followed,” she whispered. He stiffened and started to turn his head. She stopped him with a quick kiss on his cheek. “Don’t look,” she chided him out of the corner of her mouth.

  A soft whoop came from behind them, probably Chimon.

  Gama’s cheeks darkened as he fixedly stared at the crowd in front of them. “You don’t make it easy to be a simple friend, Yaki.”

  “I know. I’m almost sorry for that, but let’s hash that out another time. Anyone that tall is scary.”

  “Who is she?” Gama asked.

  “I don’t know, but I think I saw her in the crowd this morning when I was with Mitsuo.” Yaki’s thoughts trailed off as she processed what the woman might have seen. She’d probably been tracking Mitsuo. If she reported that to the priests or whom ever she was working for, the entire operation could be utterly screwed. There was only one solution. “Gama, we have to kill her.”

  He swallowed deeply and sucked in his cheeks so hard, his lips puckered. He gave a slow nod. “It was always going to come down to this, wasn’t it?”

  Yaki thought of the charred bodies of the Fox Fire crew. It had already come down to killing people, hadn’t it? Still, what chances were there that the woman was unarmed? And Gama and his friends couldn’t be subtle about drawing their rapiers. “Do you know someplace we can run to after I take the shot?”

  “You have a hand cannon?”

  “Something quieter than that.” If she could get behind
the woman, that would be best. Strike fast enough so no one really knew what they saw.

  Gama’s face tightened. “Yes, we’re near my aunt’s clinic. Nobody will chase us in there.”

  “Guide us closer,” Yaki said. Her stomach growled in protest. Both of them looked toward it, then at a street vendor selling something on skewers. Bacon, by the scent of it. Gama’s face grew dark with worry and he tugged her toward it. “It’s not like at the Bottoms’ Ball,” Yaki protested.

  “If she’s following, she’ll just watch. Then I can see her and fill Raiju and Chimon in on the plan.”

  “You can send them home. They don’t have to be involved with this,” Yaki whispered.

  “They’re my friends. Stop trying to send us away.”

  “Are they the sort of friends that will murder for you? For me?”

  He smirked. “I’m supposed to follow you, Yaki. My stars are yours, and Chimon and Raiju share my stars. We’re a package deal, I’m afraid, particularly with that prophecy hanging over us.”

  Gama ordered food as Yaki chewed over his words.

  Chimon eyed the meat with a skeptical air as the man grilling handed over six skewers. Yaki got three while one each was passed to each of the trio.

  “I think I see her,” Gama said after a moment peering into the crowd behind them. Yaki let him look while she made the meat disappear.

  “Who?” Raiju began to turn, but Chimon stomped on his foot.

  “We’re being followed, you nitwit,” Chimon snapped in a harsh whisper.

  “We are?” Raiju hunched down as he nibbled the meat.

  “Tall chick; she’s hiding weapons in her sleeves.” Chimon kept his tone matter-of-fact. “They don’t hang right.”

  “She’s not very good at this,” Gama croaked. “Pretending to find a wall very interesting at the moment.”

  “We can’t let her report,” Yaki said, staring at the empty sticks in her hand. It wasn’t her stomach that was still hungry.

  “Yeah, can’t have her boss knowing how loud of a screamer you are. That’s gotta be awkward on an airship,” Chimon said.

  Fortunately, Raiju cuffed him before Yaki could stab him.

  Glaring at Chimon, Yaki quickly hashed out the plan. Nobody volunteered a better one.

  They left the vendor with the trio clustered behind Yaki’s. They turned several corners, zigzagging their way toward Gama’s aunt and keeping to fairly crowded streets. As the trio passed a stack of crates outside of a shop, Yaki stepped behind them, hoping that her movement had been blocked from the woman’s view by Gama and Raiju’s taller frames. She casually leaned on the crates, resting her left hand on the hilt of her sword. With the other, she dug out one of the little nuggets from her pouch, popped it in her mouth, and savored the feeling of warmth as it spread through her torso. No sense fighting on an empty heart.

  The tall woman had even had a few inches on Ishe but was willowy, not mountainous like Hawk. Yaki didn’t see her face, only the long braid of hair similar to Yaki’s own. Her kimono, while drab, had the breezy quality of expensive silk. Large sleeves concealed her hands. The woman did not pause as she walked past. Yaki prayed to Grandmother Willow that her aim be true as she pointed the end of her scabbard at the woman’s back and thumbed the hidden crystal.

  The blade shot from the scabbard’s tip as metal erupted from the woman’s sleeve. A swirl of blades swept Yaki’s rapier aside, where it skewered only air. With a flourish of silver, the woman whirled to a fighting stance, brandishing a metal gauntlet that sported fingers tipped with steel talons and a purple crystal mounted on the back of her hand. Recognition dawned and Yaki’s jaw dropped in horror. Shuri Mayatama, the Steward’s third concubine and crystal-enhanced bodyguard, laughed before making a show of inspecting her blades as if they were manicured nails. If there were anyone in the entirety of the Golden Hills who could go toe to toe with Hawk, it would be Shuri. Yaki had seen her fight once. It hadn’t been much of a fight at all, really. A man had charged the Steward with a katana during a New Year celebration. Shuri had reduced the man to bloody salami before he’d gotten within thirty feet.

  Afterward, she had glared at Mother in a clear top that challenge that Madria had pointedly ignored.

  She glanced up at Yaki with an imperious air and shook her head. “Stabbing me in the back. Time outside must have damaged your brain if you thought that would work.”

  Yaki rolled her shoulders, feeling the way her dress began to cling to uncomfortably to her rapidly moistening skin. “My apologies.” Yaki plastered her face with a sly smile she didn’t feel. “I didn’t recognize you without your makeup. I see why you wear so much.”

  Rage contorted Shuri’s face in a manner that Yaki had not expected. Cornered by the wall and crates, Yaki had nowhere to go as Shuri stepped toward her, the fingers of her gauntlet extending from knives to swords. She was so busy watching those that she didn’t detect Shuri’s other hand until it had wrapped around her neck.

  “Grck!” Yaki made a strangled sound as her feet lifted free of the ground. Shuri’s face loomed close. The anger that furrowed Shuri’s brow gave her an almost-feral appearance. A snarl made her lips tremble as if she were straining to keep them down over her teeth. This close, Yaki could see that she was actually wearing a quite a bit of makeup, and what she covered with it. Dozens of subtle differences assaulted Yaki’s eyes. Irises slightly too wide, a slight divot in the center of that wide nose, concealer heavily applied below her rather full lips. Yet it was the way her nostrils flared that hammered it home. Shuri wasn’t merely crystal enhanced, she was crystal-touched concubine. The Steward slept with a woman who should be enshadowed.

  “The Steward wants you alive,” Shuri said through nearly unmoving lips, keeping her teeth covered, “but didn’t mention anything about your boys.” Shuri lifted Yaki a little higher so she could see Gama, Raiju and Chimon flanking Shuri. All three had their swords drawn. What little traffic there had been down this street had rapidly disappeared.

  “If that’s the case, I’m happy to meet him for dinner. There is no need to butcher my men,” Yaki said, grabbing Shuri’s wrist and pulling herself up to relieve the pressure on her throat. Shuri allowed this, but her arm did not budge. Yaki extended her senses and quickly found the source of the woman’s abilities. Six crystals pulsed on her person, each powerful, eager things: two in each gauntlet and two beneath her dress. A small power crystal and some sort of wind crystal, likely a shield to ward off projectiles. The crystal pressing against Yaki’s neck in the palm of the gauntlet was not one Yaki had ever felt before, burning with strength and rage. The nasty little thing screamed for Yaki’s blood.

  “The Steward is done humbling himself before Madria and her whelps. Come quietly and I’ll only kill one,” Shuri said, bringing her taloned hand to her hip and pointing her fingers behind her. If that purple crystal worked the same way as the one in her sword, then the trio was already in range. Which crystal gave her eyes in the back of her head?

  “Oh, come on, Shuri, why spoil our friendship? How often does the old man let you off your leash?” There was a slight but quickly controlled widening of Shuri’s eyes. Yaki fed the angry crystal at her throat an image of Shuri’s ribs cracking, but it snarled back. No dice there. “Let me take you for a drink, maybe see a show,” Yaki said, reaching her mind out toward the wind crystal on her chest, its little spirit churning with activity, straining to see everything. She’d found the eyes in the back of Shuri’s head.

  “I’d rather dance,” Shuri said as the crystals pulsed.

  Yaki used her grip on Shuri’s wrist to heave her body up and, with the precision gained from two years of scrambling along chains, lashed out with a steel-toed boot. A sharp Clink! sounded as the toe connected with the wind crystal. Several things happened within the space of a single moment. Yaki’s sudden movement made Shuri stumble, causing the claws shooting toward Gama’s heart to miss him almost entirely, only one finding flesh, piercing his sword arm. Seco
nd, the wind crystal screamed a high-pitched whine that jammed through Yaki’s brain. A yellow flash could be seen in Shuri’s eyes as the crystal died.

  With a growl, Shuri displayed her teeth, showing Yaki gaps where two large canines had been pulled out. Pain exploded in the back of Yaki’s skull as Shuri rammed her into the wall. Her own cry of pain cut short as the pressure closed her windpipe, new agony flooding her lungs as they battled to exhale. Behind Shuri, Gama had stumbled back, grasping at his shoulder, as Chimon and Raiju charged around either side of him. Shuri turned with a swipe of longer claws and knocked their blades aside. Her next attack forced them both back out of her range. The claws seemed to have a reach of about two feet before they got too long and thin to be useful as slashing weapons, but they could stab at a far longer range. She pointed a finger at Chimon, and Yaki kicked out, slamming a boot into Shuri’s hip. The woman merely grunted, but it gave Raiju the half-second it took to close for another thrust. Shuri cast a quick glare back at Yaki and pressed even harder on her throat.

  The blackness Yaki had been expecting didn’t come. Instead, her alien heart throbbed to life, growing hotter with each missed breath. With the heat came pressure. As the seconds passed, Yaki felt like a corked bottle sitting on a stove.

  Raiju and Chimon split up, coming at Shuri from different angles, each one trading her attention by taking turns dancing in, only to be driven back by the long claws. Raiju’s attempt to parry them all nearly tore his weapon from his hand. All the while, Yaki drove kick after kick into the woman’s midsection. They did little more than foul her aim.

  “Would you go to sleep?” Shuri hissed, pulling Yaki from the wall and slamming her back into it. Yaki saw a white flash into her vision, eyes tearing away from Raiju and Chimon to see the bleeding Gama with a small crossbow in his uninjured arm.

  With a cry of utter frustration, Shuri released Yaki, swinging her left fist around toward Gama, its green crystal springing to life. A huge disk of gray metal sprang into existence in front of the bodyguard. Yaki took her first breath in what felt like hours with a wheezing gasp. Inside, something shifted, like a minute bubble moving through her gullet. Then the pressure ignited. Yaki opened her mouth and a torrent of flame bathed Shuri’s backside in a rush. As it stopped, Yaki clapped her hand over her mouth as the scent of dragon fire filled her nostrils on the inhalation. Shuri turned, eyes wide with disbelief, hair and clothes on fire. Belatedly, she started to scream as two swords pierced her breast and withdrew before she finally fell.