Changer's Daughter (61 page)

Shango smiles nastily. “But all athanor are not Japanese.”

Katsuhiro glowers. “I have no wish to wait for my satisfaction until we can drag you before Arthur.”

“That dragging might be a bit difficult, wouldn’t it?” Shango replies with a toss of his curls. “Given that Arthur is in New Mexico and we are here.”

“Details have been worked out,” Katsuhiro answers with a glance toward the Changer. “But I have an alternative for you.”

“I’ll listen,” Shango says, suddenly serious. Apparently he, too, respects the Changer.

“Since, like you, I am a member of the Accord,” Katsuhiro continues, “if you appeal to its justice, I must permit you to go before its tribunal or be in violation myself.”

“True.”

“And, as I have said, we have made arrangements to get you to Arthur, far more rapidly than you might imagine.”

“There’s also,” Eddie adds, “the possibility that a panel of judges could be sent here. Then you must come before them or invalidate your own request. So don’t think that escaping from us would relieve you from your responsibility.”

Shango nods stiffly. “I am not newborn.”

“Ah,” Eddie says, rubbing the stubble of his beard, “but as you yourself said, there have been recent alterations to the Accord. I didn’t want to you think this had also been changed.”

Shango nods, but his gaze has already drifted from Eddie back to where Katsuhiro stands.

“And your alternate offer?”

“A duel, not to the death, simply to my satisfaction. The Accord does not smile upon athanor who deprive Harmony of one of our kind, and we have taken losses enough of late.”

“I would take a terrible risk if I dueled with you,” Shango says, but Aduke notes that he glances toward a raincoat-wrapped bundle on the ground.

“Would you?” Katsuhiro replies. “We have ample witnesses. They could make certain that my just wrath does not rob you of your life.”

“But you are a warrior; you have always been a warrior. I”—Shango affects humility—“have lately been naught but an administrator and politician.”

Aduke is not at all surprised to hear Anson chuckle. The rest of them look quite serious, especially Regis, who is in the uncomfortable position of finding that his protector is quite prepared to reject him.

“You have the advantage in that we are on your land,” Katsuhiro says calmly. “Other than what weapons we use, our talents are similar.”

Shango shakes his head in self-deprecation, but Aduke is certain that no one misses the light that flashes in his eyes as he nonchalantly fingers the earrings in his right ear.

“What would be to your satisfaction?” Shango asks.

“Hold your own against me for five minutes,” Katsuhiro replies promptly. “If I win, you agree to take part in a proposal that will be put to you. If you serve us well, I will consider myself recompensed for my suffering. If you win, you are released from any obligation to me for the kidnapping. You may still listen to the proposal, but you are not obligated.”

“That’s it?” Shango sounds surprised.

“I,” Katsuhiro says smugly, “do not expect to lose, and I firmly expect to make you suffer greatly during those five minutes. Just because I do not plan to kill you doesn’t mean that I will not hurt you.”

“I have heard legends,” Shango frowns, “that wounds caused by Kusanagi’s blade cannot be healed other than by magic.”

“That isn’t true,” Katsuhiro replies, “but since you raise the question, why don’t we agree to live with our scars as a reminder for fifty years or so?”

Shango looks genuinely nervous yet strangely tempted. Aduke wonders at the source of this temptation until she realizes that he is envisioning half a century of bragging rights for scarring the Japanese warrior.

“Let me consider,” Shango says slowly. “A proposal is one thing, but you’ve just raised the stakes.”

“So you expect to lose?” Katsuhiro taunts. “Then let us appeal to the Accord. Somehow, I don’t expect you to escape with just a few scratches when they are done with you.”

“Let me consider,” Shango repeats.

“You have five minutes, no more.”

After three minutes, during which he speaks to no one, not even to Regis, who seems rather put out at this slight, Shango turns to his accuser.

“Can I name the master of the lists?”

“Yes.”

“Dakar then.”

Aduke, recalling the apparent rivalry between Dakar and Katsuhiro, suspects that Shango seeks to annoy Katsuhiro, but the Japanese only nods and says:

“Just the man I would have chosen myself. Let Eddie be the timekeeper.”

“I agree—to Eddie as timekeeper and to your offered duel. Let the other Accord members stand witness.”

There are muttered agreements from all but the Changer. Once again, Aduke fleetingly wonders just what his relationship is to the others. Then Oya summons her to help mark the lists.

As they do so, Katsuhiro recites the terms of the duel: “There are to be no seconds. We may use any weapon that we can lay hands on. The purpose is to defeat the other without killing him. If the master of the lists thinks that either duelist has lost control, he may halt the duel for the purpose of permitting that one to regain his balance.”

“If the duel is halted,” Shango asks, “will it recommence from that point or from the start of the five minutes?”

“From that point,” Katsuhiro says, “but don’t think of this as a way to chop the duel into small segments with rests in between. We will swear on Dakar’s iron, thus he will have no trouble telling feigned fury from genuine.”

“Very well,” Shango says.

“Wait!” Regis steps from where he has been standing to the side, growing increasingly nervous. “What about me?”

“You?” Katsuhiro glances at him, then at Shango. “You are just Shango’s tool.”

“But I was the one who kidnapped you. I was the one who held you prisoner.” Regis seems frantic for recognition, or perhaps he is simply terrified about his fate if his protector loses the duel. “What happens to me? Will you challenge me next?”

“You,” Katsuhiro says, narrowing his eyes into slits, “are beneath me. Kill you, yes. The world should be rid of scum like you, but duel with you? Never!”

“Minister Omomomo!” Regis turns imploringly to Shango. “Aren’t you going to defend me?”

“It depends,” Shango replies honestly, “on how this duel is resolved. You see, until it is over, I myself am in a rather ticklish position. If I win, I certainly will deal with you.”

Regis does not seem comforted. “Remember my securities,” he threatens. “Things will happen if I die or am imprisoned!”

Shango looks at him scornfully. “I learned weeks ago where your ‘securities’ are kept and can defuse them when I wish. Did you think that
I
would suffer to let a madman blackmail me?”

“No,” Eddie says so softly that Aduke hardly hears him, “only let him spread disease and terror for your glory.”

No one else hears his words, but Aduke finds herself strangely comforted to realize that at least one among these peculiar folk has not forgotten how normal people have been used in Shango’s bid for power.

“Do you have your weapons with you?” Katsuhiro interrupts impatiently.

“I do,” Shango says. He unwraps the bundle in the raincoat. “I would like a minute to stretch before we begin.”

“Take it.”

Shango unwraps a beautiful double-headed axe and strikes at the air with it as if to accustom himself to its weight. Katsuhiro also stretches, but Aduke notes that he does not draw his sword.

Oya, now standing beside her says: “To draw the sword is to commit himself to its use. He will wait until the duel begins, even if that gives Shango the advantage.”

After sixty seconds, they stop and take oath at the shrine of Ogun to abide by the terms of the duel. Then Eddie calls them to order:

“Take your places gentlemen. The clock will begin to run when I say: ‘Begin.’ I will call a halt after three hundred seconds. Continuing after that point will be subject the duelist to a penalty from the master of the lists. Failing to halt when the master of the lists so demands will also subject the duelist to a penalty. The master may lay hands on either duelist.

“This duel is to defeat, not death, not blood. If death occurs, the witnesses will vote on whether death was accidental or deliberate and will testify before a senior tribunal of the Accord to that effect. Are there any questions?”

Two terse negatives come in reply. Aduke feels the Grove grow tight with tension as if the gods whose images encircle the perimeter are now watching. Eddie pushes a button on his watch.

“Begin.”

A bolt of lightning crackles from the clear sky, heading directly toward Katsuhiro. Faster than Aduke had imagined possible, the samurai draws his sword and parries the lightning. Part forks out toward Shango, the rest breaks into electric blue lines that course over Katsuhiro, spitting sparks from the jutting black hairs of his beard.

Shango dodges one of the lightning forks, shunts the other aside with one of the heads of his axe. Beneath the tremendous clap of thunder that follows, Aduke murmurs to Oya:

“Are they gods then, to fight with lightning?”

Oya replies, her gaze never leaving the field where Katsuhiro, white lightning outlining his sword blade, is striking at Shango: “You summoned the wind. Are you then a goddess?”

“No!”

The fine hairs on the back of Aduke’s neck and arms are standing on end and, though the college-trained part of her knows that this is merely a reaction to all the electricity in the air, the “bush” part of her feels as if the gods are preparing to punish her for blasphemy.

“No!” she repeats. “But you and I had to make sacrifices and dance for most of a night to get Oya to summon the wind. These two”—she gestures to where Shango and Katsuhiro are sending a gradually reducing lightning bolt back and forth between the wide metal edges of their respective weapons—“call the lightning without pause or consideration.”

“They have had,” Oya says, “a long, long time to practice. When they began, I suspect they, too, needed to focus their powers through ritual and appeal to the naturals through sacrifice.”

“Oh.” Aduke says, wondering just how long a “long, long” time might be. Remembering penalties exacted for fifty-year spans, she suspects it is far longer than one human life span.

Ignoring the conversations around them, the two warriors concentrate on their duel, double-bladed axe against katana. Each is a master of his weapon, each can fight with lightning and thunder as well as by more mundane means. Neither yet has so much as scratched his opponent. Aduke, who had been certain that Katsuhiro Oba would win, now has her doubts.

She watches as if the very intensity of her gaze might affect the battle, dodging as if the double-bladed axe is coming at her, flinching when lightning crackles from the sky or from Shango’s hand, feeling the pump of adrenaline fill her blood with uncontrollable energy.

Then, through the crackle of the lightning, almost drowned out by the rumbles of thunder, comes a sound so mundane, so regular, that Aduke nearly dismisses it. Even when her brain registers the gunfire for what it is, she first looks to the combatants, certain that one of them must be the source.

Neither of them have so much as paused in their trading of blows electrical and otherwise, yet over to one side Regis is falling, his body shaken as if by kicks from an invisible giant. Aduke’s mind, open now to the wonder of gods fighting with lightning a few paces away, seems to have difficulty grasping the very mundane realization that Regis has been—is being—shot. Even so, she is the first to cry: “There’s someone out there with a gun!” She hears her voice, high and shrill with panic, the words tumbling over each other in their haste to carry the news to the ears of someone who can do something about it.

The duelists do not pause. Dakar does not move from his place as marshal of the lists, nor does Eddie spare more than a worried glance, but Oya and Anson run over. The Changer merely nods as if Aduke’s announcement is expected.

In mid-stride, Anson tosses something in the direction Aduke still points, her arm as rigid as a signpost. Nothing leaves his hand—nothing that Aduke can see—but when she looks at the fence a portion is covered by a heavy white veiling, like a spider web.

“Damn!” Anson says. “Missed whoever it was.”

“Teresa,” says the Changer calmly, his gaze now returned to the duel. “I thought you knew that she had been following you.”

Anson hesitates, then a smile lights his face. It seems incongruously happy given the man bleeding to death on the ground before him, the fevered heat of the duel behind him.

“I did,” he admits, “but I didn’t know what she planned to do. Did you?”

“No.”

Anson kneels next to Oya. “How is he?”

“Dead or dying,” she replies. There is no sorrow or shock in her voice, only a calm relating of information. “A quicker death than he deserved.”

“So now we don’t need to trouble ourselves with him.”

Oya glances at Anson. “Is that why you let Teresa follow you, ancient? Did you put her up to it?”

Aduke finds herself holding her breath, waiting for Anson’s reply. Somehow, she doesn’t want to learn that the cheery Spider could be so calculating.

“No,” Anson replies to her infinite relief, “but I think it all to the best. Teresa has been driven mad with grief and rage. This death by her hand may free her to return to sanity.”

Oya nods, and Aduke finds herself nodding as well. The Spider rises to his feet, dusting off his trouser legs—Taiwo’s trouser legs—with quick, businesslike motions.

“I’d best go after her,” he says, “before she does more harm to herself or to others.”

Then, though Aduke had believed herself immune to wonder, she feels her heartbeat quicken as Anson’s arms grow longer, or is it that he himself has grown smaller? All she knows for certain is that within two clashes of the sword and axe, where a man who had looked like her husband had stood there is now a brown monkey. The monkey slips out of the heap of clothing, swarms up the fence, and jumps over into the nearest tree before vanishing into the bush.

Aduke watches him out of sight. When she turns Oya is studying her, concern on her broad features.