Seeker

by Arwen Elys Dayton

  He always became more Japanese around Mariko. There had been lectures, when he was a child, about things like manners and honor. Those lectures had meant a great deal to him, back when he’d believed his life would be full of honor.

  “Perhaps you should leave. Before I become angry again. This morning I might have killed you if you’d been around.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother.”

  He got to his feet.

  “Tell me—how did Quin get to Hong Kong?” she asked him before he could walk away.

  “The same way I got here,” he replied, sinking his fists deep into his jacket pockets to stop them from shaking. He turned toward the garden gate.

  “At the same time?” She was on her feet, catching up to him. She was tiny compared to Shinobu, little more than five feet tall. Her very Japanese face was turned up to look at his, her eyes piercing.

  “Yes,” he answered. “We came here at the same time.”

  “You never told me. I thought you escaped alone.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We were never together, not really.”

  “Are you helping her?”

  “No—yes,” he corrected himself. He stared down at his boots, still damp and dirty. “One thing, that’s all.”

  “Even when you were small, I could see something between the two of you. Your father always liked her, poor girl.”

  “I’ll go now,” he said, turning away.

  “You’re thinking of your father,” she called after him. “It’s all right. I think of him too, all the time. It’s what he wanted—you here with me and Akio.”

  “I know, Mother. It’s what he wanted.”

  “Please, Shinobu. You can … change yourself. And come back to us.” She was trying to sound firm, but he could hear the pleading in her voice.

  When he had first been reunited with his mother, he’d tried to tell her about Alistair, about that last night on the estate, but he hadn’t been able to make the words come. Mariko had sensed he was trying to make a confession, and she’d told him it wasn’t necessary. She’d said his past was forgiven and they need never speak of it again.

  It had felt wonderful, at first, to have that forgiveness. He hadn’t understood that it would be another matter entirely to forgive himself. Only the drug bars offered that mercy. Drugs had made him unfit to be near his family and had almost killed his little brother, but the bars on the Bridge were the only places where he found a small measure of relief. How could he give that up?

  “I’m not thinking of my father,” he lied, walking for the gate without looking back. “I’m thinking of a ghost.”

  Brian Kwon was not a ghost, but he was getting close. After two hours of searching, Shinobu found him huddled on the filthy pavement behind a large waste receptacle two blocks from Queen Elizabeth Hospital, from which he had apparently run, trailing an IV tube and many half-wrapped bandages.

  “I had to leave,” Brian explained. “They started asking questions.”

  One of his eyes was bandaged, and a cut on his shoulder had been cleaned but stitched only halfway shut. It was trickling blood across his shirt. He had bruises all over his face and neck.

  “You look terrible,” Shinobu said.

  “You should see the other guy,” Brian managed.

  Brian had led the last of John’s men on a wild-goose chase back on the Bridge, while Shinobu had spirited Quin away. Shinobu examined his friend’s torso and found more ugly bruises.

  “It’s not too bad,” Brian told him. “The worst part was this.” He pointed to a long, dark bruise that began on his forehead, then continued down his face and onto his chest. “I ran into a steam pipe while leading them into that east corridor. They didn’t follow for long after they realized your girlfriend wasn’t with me. They gave me a couple shots for the pain—the hospital did, I mean—not the guys on the Bridge.”

  “You make a good punching bag, Sea Bass,” Shinobu told him as he pulled the big fellow to his feet. “But she’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Whatever you say, Barracuda. I’m always getting into knife fights for girls who are just good friends.”

  “She’s my cousin—third cousin. Well, half third cousin.”

  Brian groaned deeply as he managed to get fully upright. “What’s a third cousin?”

  “It’s a … barely related kind of person, Sea Bass, who still thinks of herself as your relative.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Shinobu was trying to steady Brian, who was grimacing, apparently more in response to Shinobu’s poor prospects with Quin than from the pain. He took one unsteady step, then fell toward Shinobu like a wall of cinder blocks. Shinobu grunted under the weight but managed to shift his friend around until Brian was half riding on Shinobu’s back.

  How he was able to get Brian onto a bus and all the way down to the Bridge, he was never quite sure.

  It was midnight when they got to the Kowloon end of the Transit Bridge, its canopy of sails disappearing into the fog that was rolling across the harbor.

  “To whom shall I address your entry request?” the border guard asked him. The man delivered the question as though nothing could be more normal at this time of night than a dirty gang member carrying on his back an equally dirty but even larger gang member who was clearly injured.

  “Master Tan,” Shinobu replied.

  The man leaned forward to take Shinobu’s picture, which would be sent to Master Tan’s residence for approval. Shinobu smiled winningly into the camera, Brian still moaning on his back.

  “He’ll probably remember me.”

  CHAPTER 43

  MAUD

  In an earlier century, the Scottish estate was wilder and yet more populated. Life was centered on the castle, perched high on a promontory above the river. And yet on this day, the stone fortress was both motionless and noiseless when viewed from the outside. The residents kept themselves invisible when the Dreads were present, remaining indoors, and leaving only by the back gate when errands called.

  It was afternoon on a cool summer day, and the Young Dread pirouetted in the castle’s sand courtyard. Her left foot was on the ground, turning her swiftly in circles as her arms and her right foot blocked the objects thrown at her by the Middle Dread.

  “Catch! Block! Block! Catch!” he called out to her, slinging large rocks and sharp knives her way.

  The Young caught a knife and threw it back, blocked two rocks with her leg, then caught a third rock in her left hand.

  “Faster!” he called.

  Her left leg ached from her foot to her hip, but this meant little. In the training of the Dreads, some part of one’s body was always in pain. She sent her awareness into the muscles, ordering them to move more quickly. To an outsider, her arms would look like a blur—if an outsider had dared to watch them.

  The Middle threw a series of knives, each aimed with deadly precision at vulnerable parts of her body.

  “Catch, catch, catch!” he yelled.

  With each catch, she had to throw the knife back, aiming it just as precisely at him as he had at her. The Middle Dread kept up with her so easily, he had ample time to find unpleasant objects to hurl at her between knives. A small length of chain and a horseshoe came next.

  “Block!” he called. “Faster!”

  Her master was approaching. While most of her mind was occupied by the bombardment of missiles, a small piece of her watched the Old Dread draw near. She noted that his motions were slower even than they had been the previous day. For more than a week she had watched him wind down into dreamlike movements. He drifted to a stop nearby and very slowly lifted a hand, bringing her training session to a close.

  The knives and stones stopped being launched from the Middle Dread’s hands and were replaced around his body or on the ground. The Young Dread untwisted herself from the pirouette to walk toward her master. As she did, one final stone flew from the Middle’s hands toward her head, fast and vicious, hoping to catch her unaware. She raised an arm
at the last moment to bat it down onto the sand.

  “We will walk,” the Old Dread said. His voice was so quiet and slow it was difficult for her to hear him. His eyelids hung half closed.

  Left alone, the Middle Dread pulled out his whipsword and moved off around the perimeter of the deserted courtyard. The Young and Old passed slowly through the castle’s main gate and headed toward the woods.

  “You will not like to hear this,” he began. “It is time for me to rest.”

  “We have been stretched out so many times, Master,” she said. “Is there no rest for you then?”

  “There is. Yet not enough. The rest I speak of will be longer. You have made small jumps with me, a dozen years, a score, two score. I must stay in the darkness much longer.”

  “Will you sit, Master?” Nearby was a large stone that was handy for sitting, and they were walking at a pace so slow, it seemed pointless to continue on.

  He shook his head. In an ordinary man, this motion would have taken a few seconds. For her master, it lasted half a minute.

  “All my effort is required to stay upright and moving. If I sit, I am done. I will not rest until I am There.”

  The Young Dread looked over her shoulder and through the gate to where the Middle was practicing with his whipsword, sending it around his body so quickly, it gave the impression of a deadly black cloud. If her master truly meant to go, she would be left with the Middle, the two of them alone for years.

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Difficult to say. A hundred. Perhaps two hundred.”

  “Two hundred years!”

  “Perhaps more, child.”

  It was a shocking number.

  After the Young Dread had shown herself to be a good student, and she’d said goodbye to her family, they had spent a year in the darkness of that place, emerging to a world one year older, while she had not aged at all. She’d spent another year training. Then they had gone to that dark place for two years. And so on, alternating her training with what the Dreads called “stretching out” or “rest,” and which really meant leaving time and place behind. The longest jump had been fifty years, so that, in all, a hundred years had passed since her master had first led her away from her family home, and yet she was just twelve years old. It was now the year 1570 or thereabouts.

  “It is not so long as you may think. When your training has gone a little further, you may make a jump of as many years.”

  “How will my training go further, with you gone?”

  The Old Dread stopped, placing a hand on each of her arms. “The Middle has many valuable skills. There is much you can learn from him.”

  The Young Dread said nothing to this. She hoped her silence would speak of the Middle’s temper, his cruelty, and even things her master had never seen—like the young man at the inn, the previous Young Dread, the boy who had been stabbed for objecting to the Middle’s behavior.

  Her master’s eyelids were open only a slit, yet she could feel him surveying her closely.

  “You are strong,” he told her, as though he had heard all of her thoughts. “You can defend yourself.”

  “Can I?” she wondered.

  The other Young Dread, that boy at the inn, had been older than she was, and he had not been able to protect himself. Or had there been something else in the boy’s eyes, a desire to be free? Had he been willing to die if it meant he would escape from the Middle?

  There was a very long silence. She watched her master’s chest moving in and out, like waves rolling up a wide beach. At last, he spoke again.

  “It is why you have trained, child. You are the Young, for you are the youngest. Yet you are a Dread, just as I am, just as the Middle is. You decide what is just, as any Dread must. The Middle understands you will be alive when I wake. Or I shall be angry.”

  She had never seen her master angry, and so could not judge whether this would be a frightening prospect for the Middle Dread. Her master was old. Though she’d caught glimpses of his skill here and there, he’d been tired for all the years she’d known him. The Middle still deferred to the Old, but the Young Dread wondered how long that respect would last.

  “I can guess the thoughts that pass through your mind, child,” he told her. “I am a very different man when I have rested. I should have gone years ago. I was delayed by … your arrival.”

  Caused by the untimely death of the previous Young Dread, she thought.

  “Now I am long overdue.”

  “How will you wake up, two hundred years hence, Master?”

  The hint of a smile played across the old man’s lips.

  “That is a secret you will learn in time. When I am rested, there is much I will teach you. All of it. You will understand.”

  The Old Dread reached out a hand to steady himself against her shoulder, then sat heavily onto the ground.

  “Call the Middle to me now, child. He has the athame. Lose no time. I must rest now.”

  His eyes were almost entirely closed. His shoulders were moving downward, as though curling in upon themselves. The Young Dread turned toward the castle and ran.

  CHAPTER 44

  QUIN

  Quin studied her father in the last of the moonlight.

  “You’re alive.” The words fell out of her like stones dropped into a lake, creating ripples to the furthest reaches of her mind.

  The memory of the last time she had seen him came back to her suddenly. He had been lying in the commons, which could not be far from where they were at this very moment, and his face had been distorted by a look of hatred.

  Now, in the dawn, his skin was cool, his hands gripping hard at the fabric of the Big Dread’s cloak. No breath escaped any of the three men. They exhibited no sign of life at all, and yet their skin was pink and healthy and soft to the touch. Their bodies were not frozen by temperature; they were frozen in time. She wondered how she’d come across them while There. What were the dimensions of that no-space?

  Quin felt a strange war taking place inside her mind. A short time ago, she’d insisted to Shinobu that she was a healer and did not wish to hurt anyone. But she was now experiencing a very different urge. She pried Briac away from the others, roughly pulling his fingers loose from the Dread’s cloak and yanking him onto his back. His arms and legs held their strange positions as she moved him.

  When she’d turned his body so he was looking up toward the sky, she pulled out her whipsword. She let her hand move of its own accord—her muscles knowing the motions more than her mind did—cracking the whipsword out into the shape of a long dagger. This she lifted above Briac’s chest.

  “I said I would kill you if John didn’t,” she whispered to him. That memory had fully surfaced, and it was tugging other memories up toward the light.

  Briac’s eyes were turned to the side, his mouth partly open, as though he’d frozen midsentence. She lifted her arm higher, planning to strike down with one well-aimed blow. But her arm hovered in place for a long while.

  “Oh, God,” she breathed, unable to finish the motion. It was impossible, with him lying there helpless. She rubbed her face with her hands. Leaving him alive would mean …

  What would it mean? she asked herself. More, was the answer. More of what we did before. She wasn’t sure what she’d done with Briac before, but the outline of it lay at the back of her mind, huge and dark, a slumbering giant she did not wish to disturb. If he is alive, I’m afraid I will obey him, just as I have always done. Still, she found she could not strike him like this.

  Dawn was coming in earnest now. Quin tried to calculate how long she had spent There. Subjectively it was impossible to tell. Her memory told her both that it had been only a few minutes and that she’d spent days in that black nothingness. She had left Hong Kong near midnight. Hong Kong was seven hours ahead of Scotland, so eleven in the evening in Hong Kong would be four in the afternoon on the estate. Yet it was dawn now, which could only mean that her brief trip There had taken at least fifteen hours, or she cou
ld have lost a day and a half, or even more.

  In the growing light, she noticed a dark patch on Briac’s left trouser leg. She brushed her hand against his thigh, and it came away wet and dark. Blood. His shirt was similarly stained, at his right shoulder. He’d been shot a year and a half ago—she remembered that. So many memories were still hidden, but this one she suddenly saw in full clarity. John had shot him twice. There’s a matching scar for you! John had said. What did he mean by that? she wondered.

  In all these months, while Briac had been lost There, his blood had not even dried. It had simply stopped flowing, just as Briac and the others had stopped breathing, just as their hearts had stopped beating.

  She examined the other men more closely. The oldest, whose face was hidden behind a thick woolen hood and a full, gray beard, looked unharmed. The other one, the one they’d called the Big Dread, had a cut across his chest, which had been poorly bandaged by a torn strip of his cloak. This wound too was still wet.

  Quin wondered if these injuries were the reason her father and the Big Dread had become stuck There. It seemed likely the wounds had distracted them from their time chants and left them stranded.

  She got to her feet, noticing for the first time exactly where she was. She had come through the anomaly into a clearing in the woods. A standing stone was off to her left, and down the path, in the distance, she glimpsed the commons. This is where it all began. Right here, she thought. With a last glance at her father, she started down the path.

  As she reached the wide meadow, Quin saw the burned heaps of rubble that had once been cottages, but so far there was no sign of human life upon the estate.

  Memories were surfacing faster now, and more images from that evening came to her mind—Quin hiding by her burning cottage, throwing a knife at a man holding her mother. Her right hand twitched at that memory, and she looked down at both hands, sensing their many hidden skills.

  She passed by a structure with a gaping space where its large door had once been. The interior was dark, but otherwise it looked undamaged. The name came to her: the workshop. And up ahead was the practice barn, which had not fared as well. Its roof was gone except for a ragged remainder in a corner. Its stone walls were covered with black streaks, and the interior was strewn with fallen masonry.