When Roshike had first arrived back in the city after his time with the Kyoushi, he’d encountered a man who’d left the mountains just like him. Keep. And found out about the loose network, others who had departed for the wider world, just as he’d done. The current master of the bar must’ve left the Kyoushi a long time ago, as old as the man was, but Seiko had been too young when Roshike had met her to be anything but a recent runaway. Maybe she’d decided to go back to the mountains, back to her people. He still had a hard time thinking of them as his, or of being part of this Yes network.
Roshike hadn’t met many others in the years he had been working as a hakken-ya, but Tetsuba, the woman who’d rescued him and raised him as Kyoushi, had taught him how to make their sign. It was how he’d recognized Keep and others like him, and how they’d known who he was. Though the man he was about to meet had apparently heard about Roshike and recognized him, even without seeing the sign given in return.
Finishing his make-do haircut, Roshike swiftly swept up the trimmings, then tossed them into the trash after his ponytail. When the man came pushing through the door a moment later, Roshike met him standing and sporting a new look, which went unremarked upon.
Closing the door behind his back as he stared at Roshike, the man wearing the rumpled drab green jacket inclined his head in greeting. “I know about you already, so I suppose I should introduce myself. I’m Tashikani, but everyone calls me Tash.”
“Just don’t call me Ro and we’ll be fine.”
Tash smiled. “So I heard about your adventure last night, and I wondered if I could help you out in any way?”
Roshike hesitated before answering. Members of the Yes network helped each other out, he knew, and he’d responded to a few requests. But he hadn’t had all that much contact with the others, and he’d presumed this Tash had come to ask a favor, not to offer one. “I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can. After all, you both broke into their headquarters here and escaped. Impressive.”
“Not for one of us.”
“I’m impressed, and if you don’t want to ask for any help, maybe I can do something for you anyway. What do you plan to do next?”
That was something Roshike had finally begun to think about as he traveled here. He had no interest in returning to the Kyoushi, but heading up into the mountains was one option. Tetsuba had taught him everything he needed to know to survive on his own, and in the wilderness he wouldn’t have to worry about the enforcers for a while. If he chose to go that way though, he would wait to get a new screen. It would be useless in the mountains, and taking it back down with him would be dangerous.
He squinted at Tash with sudden suspicion. “I don’t want to return to the Kyoushi. You’re not going to try to get me to go back to them, are you?”
Tash shook his head. “Why would I? You were free to leave, and you did. I left the mountains and came to the cities because I have work I want to do down here. The question is what do you want to do now? Just keep moving around and staying out of sight—and out of the Batsu’s way?”
“Why not? I should be able to avoid them.”
Tash answered indirectly. “The enforcers won’t give up soon or easily. And even if you keep getting new screens, it’ll be difficult staying one step ahead of them all the time.” He held up his hands. “I believe you could manage, but still—”
It would be rough, true. That was why Roshike had been considering retreating up into the mountains until the Batsu tired of searching for him. “It’s one option. Have you got a better idea?”
“I’ve got another option at least, for you to consider. You could go to New Tokyo. I’m based there, and it’s the last place they’d look for you.”
That was a good idea. With both Seiko and Teresa gone, Roshike’s only real tie to the Kansai area was Keep, and that was a slim one. Heading somewhere new might be just what he needed. And with the Batsu thinking they had New Tokyo completely under their control, they’d never expect him to head there. Starting over right in their back yard was an appealing thought.
Roshike nodded. “If I did go to New Tokyo, I’d need to get a new screen when I got there.” And he wouldn’t want to get one now, since he’d have to go through the mountains on the way. “Could you direct me to a dealer who’d get me the kind I’d need, and one who wouldn’t rip me off?”
“Of course I could. I might also be able to offer you a job—if you’d be interested.”
Of course Roshike would be interested, though he didn’t say so. A new city would bring new opportunities, but a job in hand would help him start off right. “I’m interested, and I’ll think about it. If I do show up in New Tokyo, how can I find you?”
“Go to Chofu City and find the Kyuu-ban hotel. I’ll contact you there.”
Roshike waited a minute after the man had left, then followed him into the hall, turning to the right and toward the back of the building. He wanted to think about Tash and his offer, but Ivan was there at the door, grinning. Without a word, he grabbed Roshike by the shirt with both hands, kicked open the back door, and sent him flying out into a narrow alleyway. Roshike played it up by stumbling into the wall of the building opposite, then turning and glaring before stalking off. Then he turned his mind to what he needed to do next.
Whatever choice he made about his larger goal, getting away from the Batsu and up into the mountains was his next step. And the quickest way from here would be through Kita-ku, then up Mt. Rokko. But the enforcers were likely watching that way, so Roshike headed north and east toward Kyoto. Nobody went that way if they could help it.
Chapter 3
City of Ghosts
Walking in hot Kyoto
ROSHIKE WALKED DOWN one of the deserted side streets of the city with the sun beating down on him from overhead. There was little opportunity for shade—the buildings here had been more on the shorter side, but even the two-story structures had mostly collapsed over the years—and the air was humid and horribly heavy. Sweat poured out of every pore on his body and ran down in rivulets, soaking his clothes and falling to the ground in drops. The shorter haircut helped, but the heat was oppressive. So he was going slow.
He’d been making his way along the narrow side streets that ran between the major roads crisscrossing the city, and that had hampered his progress as well. Though he seemed to be the only living soul in Kyoto, he’d been avoiding the wider streets out of an abundance of caution. A complete and eerie silence permeated the place. He felt as if he were struggling through a sluggish dream—or maybe it was a nightmare.
When this city was cold, it was bitter. But when it was hot, it was an inferno—those temperature extremes alone might’ve been enough to keep people away from Kyoto, but there was more to it than that. There were the spirits of the dead.
Roshike didn’t know how many generations ago everything had fallen apart, but he’d heard how violent it had been, and how this city in particular had been a bloodbath. And evidence remained, littered in the streets and inside the ruins of buildings, because no one had been around to clean anything up. The Kyoushi said it had been so bad people had left the bodies where they dropped until no one had remained to take care of them. So Kyoto had become a ghost town long before Roshike had been born.
Humans hadn’t been the only ones to ruin this city though. After them the animals had invaded—he’d heard that hordes of monkeys had done more damage than even the worst scavengers, but they’d all done their part to ravage what was left of Kyoto. But eventually even they had retreated. Because of better forage in the hills and mountains, not for fear of the ghosts. That was what kept people away.
Not Roshike, of course, or the Kyoushi, who occasionally used the city as a shortcut. But there was little reason for anyone to come in the first place, including Batsu enforcers, who wouldn’t be scared by any lingering spirits. Everybody likely left this city alone because it was an unpleasant reminder.
Indeed, even the odd structure that still seeme
d mostly sound had been despoiled beyond what was fit for human habitation. Otherwise Roshike would have stayed inside one of these buildings during the heat of the day and continued his journey at night. And he hadn’t wanted to take the risk of remaining in Kobe any longer than necessary. So he’d hurried here, hoping to make it up into the mountains well before nightfall.
The narrow road he’d been plodding along ended at the wide thoroughfare that ran east and west across the north side of the city. Once again he decided to skip that easy path. After looking carefully in every direction and seeing no one, Roshike started to run across the road.
As he did, the glint off a thigh bone lying in the middle of the street caught his eye. Scavengers had made off with most of the bones long ago, but those left behind had been picked clean then bleached by the sun. It was another reminder.
Walking down another side street and along the edge in a rare stretch of shade, Roshike abandoned thoughts of the past and focused on his future. The cool, peaceful sanctuary of the mountains called to him. And once he made it there, he knew he would be tempted to remain and rest a while, after the ordeal of the past few days. Even though surviving up in the mountains required a lot of physical effort. It was his emotions that needed a break, not his body. But was a solitary retreat really the best thing?
Tash’s offer was tempting too, but in a different way—the call of adventure. A whole new city, and a vast one, to explore. New people to meet and help. Or try to, and that brought his thoughts back to Teresa and his failure of the other night. Maybe staying away from everyone was the right idea.
Thankfully, he wasn’t so totally absorbed in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear the sound of boots echoing behind him. Everything was so quiet, whoever was walking toward him couldn’t be very close. And by habit Roshike always moved silently, so his footsteps weren’t making any noise at all, certainly nothing an enforcer would notice. It would have to be one of the enforcers hunting him he heard, but at least he’d been forewarned. That clumsy clomping had given him time to prepare.
Glancing around to assess his options, Roshike then ducked into a gaping hole in the side of a nearby building. Three stories and partially collapsed, it definitely wasn’t sound, but he didn’t plan to stay in there long. Working his way around the rubble inside, he discovered an intact door on the other side leading to an alley running behind this row of buildings. Exiting the shell of what had seemed to be an old hotel, he then slipped silently back in the direction he’d come. And as he padded softly across the pavement, he listened.
The side street he’d been on before curved, and this alleyway led back to it. The enforcer, for that’s who it had to be, hadn’t yet passed the mouth of the alley, so Roshike plastered himself against the side of the last building in the row in the sliver of shadow it cast. And waited. Tetsuba had taught him to always choose his ground, and this would be as good a place as any to meet the enemy.
He expected the Batsu were using their typical tactics of splitting up and quartering the city. Trying to flush him out, if he were here. And soon they would know he was.
Soon the black-suited shape of an enforcer was striding down the center of the street past the opening of the alleyway. The man was swiveling his head back and forth, searching, but he didn’t seem to see Roshike. And his gun was still in its holster, under the man’s jacket. So Roshike should be able to deal with him without making too much noise.
He darted out of the shadows and came up behind the enforcer quickly and quietly, intending to render the man unconscious with a chokehold. But though he hadn’t made a sound, the man must have sensed his presence. Spinning around at Roshike’s approach, he automatically grabbed for his gun, but Roshike was already there and driving his shoulder into that arm. Preventing the enforcer from getting his weapon out.
Then Roshike was turning in close and snaking his arm under the other man’s, and around behind his shoulder. At the same time Roshike was lifting with his hip to disrupt the man’s balance. Then he threw him to the ground. And as he hit the enforcer’s head against the pavement, in that moment he was tempted to slam it down full force and end the man’s life. They killed Teresa.
But instead, he instinctively softened the blow, then knelt down to check the man’s pulse. Alive, of course, but out cold. The enforcer wouldn’t wake—not for quite a while, and that was all Roshike needed. Or not quite.
Patting the man down to discover his screen in one of the jacket pockets, Roshike removed it. Hefting it in his hand for a moment, he then lobbed the thing high, arcing it over the top of a building to the south. When the man didn’t check in, or didn’t respond to a call from his fellow enforcers, his screen would be pinged for its location. Not that those other men would care about their fallen companion or try to find him. But they would use that location as a nexus to close in around where they supposed Roshike to be. Hopefully he’d just shifted their net by enough space to slip through.
As he stood there and sighed with relief, he began to shake, thinking of what he’d almost done. It had been close, but he was glad he hadn’t taken the man’s life. He hadn’t killed the one who’d actually shot Teresa, and he had no desire to kill some random thug who’d been hunting him. He’d only take a life if he had to, and there’d been no need.
Reaching under the enforcer’s shoulders to take the man by his armpits, Roshike dragged him back into the alley and out of sight, then continued on—past the back of the hotel he had used as a shortcut and across a major thoroughfare into another side street. He should be able to go through the hole he had just made in their tactics and get out of the city and into the hills before they caught up. He would easily evade them in the thick vegetation, assuming they tried to follow. And they wouldn’t make it very far if they did.
He sprinted down one little lane to the east and then up another to the north, nearing the outskirts of the city, all the while keeping his senses alert for any indication of enforcers in the area. He needed to know about them before they came upon him, if he was going to deal with them on his terms. But as he ran, he remembered.
Roshike didn’t have any memories of his life before being a boy living on the streets and stealing to survive, and even that was hazy in his mind. Apart from one day which still stood out crystal clear. The time the enforcers had chased him down, cornered him in a dead-end alley. There’d been two of them, and they’d told him he was a thief. They would have taken him away. He didn’t know where or what for even now, but he’d been sure it would be a horrible fate. Then the old lady had appeared suddenly, out of nowhere.
Roshike smiled as he recalled that first time he had met Tetsuba, though he’d not known her name then. It hadn’t been her real name, but a nickname given her by the Kyoushi. Iron Grandma. That day he’d seen how she’d earned such a moniker though. She’d dispatched a couple of enforcers with breathtaking ease, and then she’d been the one to take him away. Into the mountains.
Then the curves of the road he’d been traveling brought him back to the present as it returned him to the thoroughfare just shy of the intersection with the wide diagonal road that headed off to the northeast, into the hills and toward Mt. Hiei. It meant he was almost out of the city.
The Batsu shouldn’t have gotten this far in their search for him yet, but still he planned to stick to the side streets for as long as he could. As he began to cross along the edge of the road toward another alley though, he spied a strange sight in the distance. Up ahead, where the street started to wind some as it followed the river up into the hills, he saw a woman walking out of the city. Right in the center of the road.
At first he thought she had to be a mirage made by the heat. His second thought was that she had to be a delusion caused by dehydration, as that would have explained why he started chasing after her the moment he saw her. Really it was because he had to warn her—obviously she couldn’t know the city was now swarming with enforcers. But as he got closer, he wondered if he’d gone insane.
&n
bsp; The woman was wearing a long, thick, flowered robe, the sort of thing people supposedly sported in ancient times, despite it being totally unsuitable for this heat. Neither was it appropriate attire for running around these ruins. And she strolled serenely on as if she hadn’t a care in the world, making him wonder if she wasn’t a ghost. As ridiculous as that thought might be.
She had to be one of the Kyoushi, despite dressing so impractically. But whoever, or whatever, she was, she certainly wasn’t an enforcer.
Not wanting to startle her, or attract the attention of the Batsu, he spoke in a soft voice while she was still well ahead of him. “Are you lost?”
In the silence, his voice carried enough to reach her. She stopped and turned around slowly to take a good long look at him before she answered, smiling as she spoke. “Not anymore.”
She sounded amused by that, as if it were some sort of joke. When he failed to laugh, her smile collapsed into a frown. She was even taller than Teresa had been, standing several centimeters higher than him, with porcelain white skin. Even so, this close she appeared slightly less unreal. He made the sign of the Yes network then, and was greatly relieved to see her make the answering motion with a swift flutter of her left hand. She was Kyoushi.
“I’m Roshike, by the way.” He wondered briefly if Tash had sent her to meet him—the man might’ve guessed which way Roshike would head—but why? They’d already arranged a rendezvous in Chofu, in the event Roshike decided to take Tash up on his offer. This had to be a chance encounter.
She was smiling again. Then she held her hand in front of her mouth and gave him a throaty chuckle. “And I’m Shindako. Pleased to meet you.”
He winced involuntarily as she spoke her name. It sounded as if it meant ‘dead girl’—an unfortunate pronunciation. And creepy, given where they were. It wouldn’t be what her name truly meant, but without knowing how it was written he could only guess what that would be.
Whispers of the Dead (Miraibanashi, #1) Page 4
