by Dave Gross
"How dare you speak of the inspector!" Shiro shouted as he cradled Takeda's head on his knees. The inspector moaned as his man tried to cover his flayed body with his own outer robe.
Kazuko's tentacles twitched, eager to strike. She eyed Shiro.
"What caused you to act in such haste?" said the boss. He laid a hand on Arnisant's head. "Was it simply the impatience of youth? Did you yearn to take your father's place?"
Kazuko scowled, but she took the bait. "My brother learned of my designs, so I visited Yamana this evening. Like the inspector, he is a man who deserves respect. As I apologized for the need to take his life, he tried to bargain with me. He told me of your reputation as an investigator, and I agreed that your arrival might serve to reinvigorate the search for the other tattoos. Before you appeared, I barely had time to disguise myself as a servant."
"And to instruct your men to flay the skin from Yamana's arm. Yet this petty cruelty puzzles me. If you wished me to find the other tattoos, why attempt to mislead me with a false clue?"
"To inspire you!" she said. "Yamana told me of your vanity. He said you had a weakness for spectacle. Do not deny it. I saw your eyes fill with excitement at the sight of the corpse."
She wasn't wrong, I thought. And she reminded me how happy I'd been to see a pretty girl to comfort at the scene of the crime. She'd played the boss, and she'd played me.
"Is it too much to hope that your respect for the honorable Inspector Takeda is sufficient to allow us to remove him to safety?"
Kazuko laughed. "It is far too much."
"Very well," said the boss. He waved his hand in what you might mistake for a helpless gesture. I read it for the signal that it was: Cut her.
I'm more of a stabbing fellow, ordinarily. But I can cut a straight line.
Or the rough outline of a phoenix.
It took me three strokes. The first made a clean arc over the bird's raised wings. The wound sagged open, making me think that the magic sealing the stolen skin together hadn't yet bound it to the flesh below. Two more strokes joined the ends of the first cut to a point beneath the phoenix's blazing claws.
The tattoo lit up like molten gold, but only for a second. I grabbed it by the edge and tore it away.
The point of the boss's sword emerged from her back. He'd struck so quickly, she hadn't had time to scream.
Above us, the tentacles swelled and rose toward the ceiling before sinking down again. They withered and fell slack as a snake's shed skin.
The rest of Kazuko's tattoos stretched like living things away from her body. The yeti was the first to break free, its straining muscles bursting like inflamed boils. Once ruptured, the stolen flesh collapsed on the floor, flaccid and unmoving.
All around us, the Kappas resumed their attack, but the sight of their defeated leader drained their courage even as it emboldened the samurai. The rest of the fight was noisy, bloody, and already decided.
∗ ∗ ∗
The morning light shone bright on the waves, and I could barely make out the sandbar of the Seahorse from across the bay. At least for a while, the Kappas weren't the most feared gang in Oda. The old rivals went back to war less than an hour after the news of Kazuko's death and that of her brother. From the Seahorse all the way up to the eleventh precinct, the constables would be picking up more bodies this morning. But they'd be doing it without Inspector Takeda.
"So he sold his sword to marry a prostitute."
The boss frowned. And I thought I'd used the polite word. "She was a prostitute only on the night he paid for her water-raising ceremony. Purchasing her contract from the Flower and Willow Pavilion cost far more than a public official could afford. Thus, for love, he sold his family sword. When his wife died bearing their second daughter, he was father by day, mother by night. He could no longer afford all of his servants. His appearance suffered. Soon his peers shunned him."
"But all the girls at the whore—I mean, at the flower place," I said. "They all bowed to him. Even Kazuko said she respected him."
"Where a noble finds disgrace, the common man sees honor." The way he said it, I guessed he was quoting something from a book. Either that or he was getting poetical on me again.
I patted Arnisant on the shoulder. You and me, I thought. We're the common men.
We boarded the ship that would take us to mainland Tian Xia. Somewhere in the middle of it all we'd find a country called Quain. If the boss's information was right, the king there had a line on another one of these magic husks. I'd tried talking him out of it, but it was no use. In his mind, it'd be some kind of disgrace to return without the thing the Decemvirate had sent him to find.
Inspector Second Class Uchida Osamu, newly appointed to lead investigations in the eleventh precinct, had wangled not only our passage but also a pretty good reward for our help in the investigation. His report painted our help in such a good light that the city leaders considered us honored visitors rather than foreign devils, a phrase I heard every time I walked the streets alone. That was good luck for us, since the body count was sure to grow in the weeks ahead. Osamu and Shiro were going to have their hands full as the gang war heated up.
So it was a surprise when I saw both men ride toward the docks. A third man sat between them, a little stiff in the saddle. I thought it was a good thing they hadn't arrived earlier. Horses don't much fancy me, and I'd hate to see them throw the newly anointed Lord Takeda, Chief Inspector of all of Oda.
At first the phoenix tattoo wouldn't stick to him, even after the boss had blown the pearly dust all over Takeda's weeping wounds. But he wouldn't give up. At last Shiro charged over to behead the dying Kazuko, and the magic took on Takeda's ravaged body. One customer at a time, I guessed.
Takeda and his men raised their hands in salute as our ship left dock. The boss returned the gesture with a Chelish flourish I'd seen him use in fancy company.
Arni just sat at attention, but I lifted his paw to help him wave back. The boss shot me a look like I was embarrassing him, but I didn't care. I wasn't making fun of the samurai, even if they were all above me. I was just helping Arnisant tell them how we both felt, common fellows that we were.
It'd been an honor.
About the Author
Dave Gross is the former editor of magazines ranging from Dragon to Star Wars Insider and Amazing Stories. The adventures of Radovan and Count Jeggare feature the novels Prince of Wolves and Master of Devils, as well as many novellas and short stories available at paizo.com. His Forgotten Realms novels include Black Wolf and Lord of Stormweather. Other recent publications include stories in Tales of the Far West and Shotguns v. Cthulhu. You can keep up with Dave's latest shenanigans on Facebook, Twitter (@frabjousdave), and at frabjousdave.blogspot.com.
