The Nicholas Linnear Novels (235 page)

“My prayers always include him,” Nangi said. “He is the child I never had, my legacy. He is ever in my thoughts, bound to me like my own flesh and blood.”

“Then pray for him again, Nangi-san. Pray that he will outlive you.” Umi’s voice lay suspended in the air like smoke. “The
dorokusai
comes for him. This is the ending that has been foretold in many cultures. Before it is over, there will be death and more death.”

Senjin existed within Conny Tanaka’s co-op. He breathed tidally, incidentally, allowing his mind to work. His gift. With it he searched the entire house without ever moving from his spot at the head of the stairway down from the storage attic.

He found Justine. He moved on. There was no one else in the house, but there was a voice.

Nicholas Linnear’s voice.

Slipping something dark and heavy over his right hand, Senjin followed the voice, determined to discover its source, as an explorer seeks the headwaters of a winding river.

Senjin flexed his fingers inside the
nekode.
It was a leather war gauntlet used by the ninja of centuries ago. It was studded with short metal spikes. It was so tough that, used in the right manner, it could stop a sword strike in midair.

He went down the stairs.

“Now the spirit is within you, the spirit of grief. Your spirit, bowed before the judgment of Heaven, sinks downward to the earth. It is heavy with gravity’s wish. The tenure of eternity grows, freed from the bonds of time. The voices of light have been heard. The hands of sound lie upon your flesh. Here is the judgment of Heaven: I bind you in chains of iron.”

Nicholas’s voice intoned this litany over and over, as if it were a prayer—or a chant. Senjin froze. He is here, he thought, and I cannot discern him. He is invoking
kokoro,
the heart of tanjian. He is working Tau-tau magic against me. What is his strategy?

“Now the spirit is within you, the spirit of grief.”

Senjin set aside the questions that could not yet be answered. He concentrated on Justine, went down the hall, down another flight of stairs.

“…heavy with gravity’s wish.”

On the second floor he found her.

“The tenure of eternity grows…”

Justine lay on a couch, asleep. The room was not a large one. Nevertheless, it was couched in shadows. The shadows were colored by Nicholas’s voice:
“The voices of light have been heard.”

Senjin, a shadow himself, stood at the headwaters of the river, having come as far upstream as he was able. Heavy curtains covered floor-to-ceiling windows. The floor was wooden parquet. Cornices near the ceiling pierced the shadows, thrusting themselves from corners, appearing like lights in the gloom. Persian carpets of black and persimmon were strewn across the floor. Two matching gilt chairs faced each other in empty conversation. Black stereo speakers were almost invisible in two corners of the room. It was from these that Nicholas’s voice emerged like a waterfall at a river’s source.

“The hands of sound lie upon your flesh.”

So he’s not here, after all, Senjin thought. He has set this litany of Akshara, the language of eternity, as a guardian while he is gone. He took one step toward the sleeping Justine, and thought, But why would he leave her untended?

He stopped so close to her that he could see her chest moving with her slow, even breathing. She is, indeed, asleep, he thought. But she cannot be alone, unguarded.

“Here is the judgment of Heaven…”

Then he considered all the extraordinary precautions he had encountered on the roof, and thought, But they believe that she
is
guarded. Safe from me.

“I bind you with chains of iron.”

Justine opened her eyes. She looked at Senjin, sat up. “I know you,” she said.

“…spirit is within you, the spirit of grief.”

Justine said, “Why have you followed me here, all the way to America?”

“You don’t remember me,” Senjin said, moving toward her like a wraith. “You dreamed me, conjured me out of your own pain and loneliness and desire.”

“To float,” Justine said, “like a cloud above the jam-packed earth.”

Senjin touched her, and she shuddered.

“Your spirit, bowed before the judgment of Heaven, sinks downward to the earth.”

“That voice,” Senjin said, his hand spreading upon her. “Can you turn it off?”

“I hear no voice but yours…and mine,” she said.

“The tenure of eternity grows, freed from the bonds of time.”

Senjin left her for a moment, went behind each speaker, ripped the cables from the wall.

“The voices of light have been heard. The hands of sound lie upon your flesh.”

Nicholas’s voice did not stop; it seemed to emanate from the walls, the ceiling, the floor, to be inhabiting the very room itself.

“What is it,” Justine asked, “I see in your face?”

Then Senjin put his hands on her again. “Where are the emeralds your husband hid?” He asked this in the same tone of voice he had asked the clerk in the hardware store for the aerosol can of freon and the other items he had taken without paying for.

“Wrapped in a box,” Justine said.

“What did he do with the box, Justine? Did he bury it?” Senjin asked, closing the distance between them from arm’s length to a handsbreadth.

“No. He mailed it.”

“Where?”

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t know. I—”

“But you
do
know,” Senjin urged her. “You saw the address.”

“I didn’t. I—”

“Think!”

She jumped as his voice changed, charged her.

“
Now the spirit is within you—”

“You know, Justine!”

“Yes,” Justine said, “I think I do. My husband has an old friend, a trusted friend. Lewis Croaker. Lew lives in Marco Island, Florida now. He owns a fishing boat. He…”

The bones in Senjin’s neck cracked as his head swiveled around. That sound!

“The tenure of eternity grows, freed from the bonds of time.”

Noises from above. Someone was upstairs. His means of entrance had been discovered.

Senjin closed Justine’s eyes with the pads of his thumbs. He lay her back down on the couch. Quickly he crossed the room, drew aside first one curtain then another. There were no windows, just trompe l’oeil paintings depicting a French countryside.

Senjin turned back, went to the door then through it, into the shadows of the hallway but could discern no image, just a black, featureless wall. Nicholas!

He turned, raced down the stairs.

And was plunged into darkness. Senjin stood still, his senses questing outward in ever-widening circles. He ignored the sounds only he could detect, of footsteps on the stairs above him. Nicholas was coming, but his first priority was to get some sense of his environment. He very much wanted this final, inevitable confrontation with Nicholas, but he wanted to do so on territory that was, at worst, neutral.

He found the source of light, activated it. He was surrounded by his own image. Then it was joined by that of Nicholas.

“Now the spirit is within you, the spirit of grief.”

There were five of Nicholas, six. Senjin, used to discerning his gift, was at a loss. Since he was unable to see Nicholas’s mind, he was unable to tell image from reality.

He turned and Nicholas turned. Or was it the image of Nicholas? There was only one way to find out.

“Your spirit, bowed before the judgment of Heaven, sinks downward to the earth.”

Senjin crouched. His wrist flicked once, twice, three times. Glass shattered as blade after blade left his fingertips, entering Nicholas’s chest—the image of Nicholas, as it turned out—as one by one he broke the mirrors.

“The voices of light have been heard.”

Only one Nicholas; only one Senjin.

“Here I am,” Nicholas said, another Nicholas from the one who was constantly intoning, invoking the vibration of
kokoro,
the heart of things, the tanjian field of energy that can be harnessed by ritualized actions and meditative thoughts. “This is what you want.”

Senjin leaped, crashed into a mirror. A thousand points of light cascaded over him, a waterfall of sound and image. Then he felt himself whirled around. Other hands were upon him; the touch of a tanjian.

“The hands of sound lie upon your flesh.”

Now he understood Nicholas’s strategy. He had ignored the incantation—at his own peril! The invocation of the membrane
kokoro
was not to be ignored, ever. The taped chanting had lulled him. He had seen it as a diversion only, beneath all but the most cursory notice. After all, it was Nicholas Linnear he was after, not Nicholas’s recorded voice.

And yet the voice had had the same power as if Nicholas were speaking it himself. The membrane
kokoro
responded to repetition and to words of prayer. This Nicholas had accomplished with his tape, even as Senjin was getting what he wanted: the location of the last cache of emeralds.

“Here is the judgment of Heaven…”

Senjin put his left leg between Nicholas’s, went into the Serpent, an attack stance. From this he wove the Rising Cloud, a strike used from one’s knees. All thrust was centered in the small of the back, that area in the opposite side of the body’s circumference from the
hara,
the place in the lower belly where all force, all centering energy, resides. In a kneeling position the legs and hips are useless, hence the reliance on the torso.

The Rising Cloud, used from a standing position, surprised Nicholas. Senjin could feel the split instant of his opponent’s hesitation, and he struck, using elbows, wrist bones, the sides of his hands.

Nicholas staggered, and Senjin, having regained the initiative, employed the Wounded Dove, using percussive strikes against the nerve meridians in Nicholas’s upper arms. It was not Senjin’s intention to kill Nicholas quickly, although he felt quite confident that he could do just that had it been his objective. A slow death, by increments—the disabling and death of first friends, then wife, then Nicholas himself—was Senjin’s objective.

Then, in two lightning-swift strikes, the initiative changed hands. Nicholas broke through Senjin’s attack with the Cross Wind, a downward collapse which took him away from the percussive blows and inside Senjin’s defenses.

Senjin’s response was to follow Nicholas down onto the floor, to follow up his attack so that there would be no letup. But this was what Nicholas had in mind, and he was ready. The Double Fence used a weak-looking yin posture as a launchpad for a vicious attack.

Nicholas lowered his hands and Senjin followed them, taught, as all tanjian had been, to follow the flow of the hands, not the twist of a shoulder, a turn of the head, a glance of the eyes, which could all be false. Where the hands resided, there would the next attack commence.

Their hands touched, an instantaneous spark of energy. Nicholas’s hands covered Senjin’s, and Senjin contemptuously thrust them aside. The instant he did this, Nicholas’s hands parted, slammed heelfirst into Senjin’s unprotected chest.

Senjin reeled backward. His head hit the wall where the last mirror had been, and a shard, razor-sharp, jagged, sliced into his left ear. He jerked his head away, but Nicholas delivered two short, sharp strikes to his sternum, thrusting him back at the shard. It sliced into him again.

Nicholas struck him again, but now Senjin ignored the pain. Lights were flashing in his head and he was having trouble breathing. He needed time to damp down the pain and the bleeding, to bring his mind back into line with Tau-tau.

He twisted so his left shoulder was toward Nicholas, and as Nicholas attacked the shoulder, drove Nicholas’s hands into his face with an upward swing. At the same time, he smashed his right knee into Nicholas’s lower belly.

Nicholas went to his knees, and Senjin leaped over him, ran up the stairs, back to where Justine lay, entangled in Tau-tau magic. She was Senjin’s shield, his power over Nicholas.

“…I bind you in chains of iron.”

Nangi said, “I want to talk to this man the Scoundrel. He’s the key, though I doubt he knows it.”

Tomi nodded. She led Nangi into an interrogation room inside the police building in central Tokyo. It had been three days now since Kusunda Ikusa attacked Killan Oroshi in the hotel room, but she wasn’t taking any chances with her friend’s life. Kusunda Ikusa might be dead, but it was still unclear how many people might be involved. Also, Nangi had been in around-the-clock negotiations with Nami in a monumental psychological tug-of-war over the fate of Sato International and Tomkin Industries.

“You’ll find everything you asked for here,” she told Nangi, then went to get the Scoundrel.

Her mind was still filled with images of Killan Oroshi and Ikusa. At the moment she burst into the hotel room, her first thought was for her friend’s safety. She never should have allowed the Scoundrel to come with her. His own desires were immaterial in the fact of such danger. But Killan had been his responsibility. He hadn’t wanted to leave her in the first place, but her antipathy toward Tomi had prevailed. Killan had refused to go with him to deliver the tape—and their confession.

Poor Killan. The sight of her blood-streaked face, the sound of her screaming, haunted Tomi. It was time to tell the Scoundrel what had happened to her.

His face was white and strained, and when he saw her coming to get him, he said, “She’s dead, isn’t she? Ikusa got to her.”

“He certainly tried,” Tomi said, nodding for the guard to open the cell door.

The Scoundrel stepped out into the echo-filled corridor. “You mean she’s alive? Killan’s alive?” He blinked in the harsh fluorescence.

“Yes.”

The cell door clanged shut behind him and he jumped. He gave a little, nervous laugh. He looked awful, like a junkie or a condemned man.

“Your perspective changes awfully fast when you’re in here,” he said as they began to walk down the corridor. “I know you put me here for my protection, but after what I’ve done, I could imagine myself in here for real.” He swallowed hard. “What will happen to me, Tomi?”

“That depends.” Tomi saw the desolate look on his face, touched him briefly. “Take it easy. I don’t know what laws you’ve broken, if any.”