Samurai (16 page)

“
Where
are you going?” asked Taro, harshly.

“He says he can take us to the darkest of the dark places,” explained Key, pointing to the driver. “Isn’t that where we should start looking?”

Mamoru raised an eyebrow. No one admitted the boy was right, but Taro caught up to the bicycle cab.
“Move over,” he said, climbing in beside the boys.

“Wait a minute. There’s not enough room for us,” said Aldric, irritated.

“No problem,” Rajiv answered in his accented voice. “My brothers can accommodate anything, even large American rear ends.”

“I’m an
Englishman
,” muttered Aldric.

“So much the easier,” Rajiv replied happily, and behind him, another bicycle cab rolled up, this one driven by an even older and even skinnier man. And behind him, more were coming, each driver older and less substantial than the last.

Mamoru found a seat in the last cart, which sagged so much it caused sparks as it rolled down the street.

The pace was slow, very slow, but it gave the Dragonhunters a chance to study the crowded streets for signs of a Serpentine presence, and Simon was pleased with Rajiv’s knowledge of their surroundings and his amazing happiness in the face of all the city’s troubles.

At last the bicycle cabs rolled into an area that did indeed seem darker than the rest of the city. Pitch-black smoke unfurled from many factories, coating the streets with an ugly mist. Several ancient palaces flanked the district, but they were so rundown Simon barely noticed their faded grandeur until he looked
closely. One was adorned with simple columns; another with sculpted tigers; a third with curved swords holding up its terraces; and the last palace was a dull yellow with huge minarets.

Any of them might serve a Dragon well.

B
OMBAY BELONGED TO THE
Tiger Dragon. She knew about everything that happened here. She knew the Ice Dragon had crossed into her territory by airplane, for harmless snooping, scribbling in his book, no doubt—though he’d better keep out of her way until this was all over. She’d find some use for him in the new empire, or else find time to kill him, one or the other.

He was far down the list of challenges. She had learned about the arrival of the St. Georges and their new Asian partners within minutes of their entering the harbor. The news traveled along a line of beggars, thieves, and informants, paid to watch for odd happenings and foreign arrivals at all times. They’d seen the Dragonhunters arrive by boat, a strange assort
ment of tourists to say the least. Some of them were wearing armor under their coats, and the addition of a bobcat and a fox was hardly the way to blend in.

Issindra the Tiger Dragon was not amused.

From her magnificent Bombay palace, raised high on a hill by giant statues of roaring tigers, well above her complex of factories, Issindra heard the news from an old one-legged beggar. Looking out over the city, she considered how this would change her plans.

It was a bad day. Things were happening too quickly. She had been jolted to hear of a strange fiery phenomenon that had occurred in Tokyo, eating everything in its path, cutting a hole through the city. Odd conditions in the atmosphere, the news reports said.

The Dragon of Japan was on the run, headed for Bombay. They were supposed to begin talks on uniting their ventures, but they would take place sooner than expected. He’d sent her a message, a word written in blood that had formed on her mirror earlier in the day.
Rendezvous.
Imagine the audacity. It obstructed her view. Clearly, he wanted to show he knew how to get under her skin.

If he was so tremendously powerful, why didn’t he just gut the Dragonhunters who were making his life so difficult?
But she knew the answer.
You could try, but you could never quite snuff them out. You could crush them, and they’d spill out of your fingers somehow; you could burn them, but
they’d rise from the ashes. Good fortune followed them. It was a puzzle, and a waste of thought. No sense in chasing them. Let the Hunters come into her trap of their own free will. Their time would come. They were no match for the speed and cunning of the Serpent mind. Sooner or later they’d burn.

Her appointment with the Japanese Serpent would have to be kept, of course. She was planning to mate with him and kill him, and there would be no point in making the whole thing more difficult by putting it off.

One part of the plan she was certain of: Once the Japanese Creature saw her, he would surely find her suitable. On the wall, draped in jungle ivy, were huge oil paintings of her human self, and coiled in vines were sculptures of her elegant form. She was even more beautiful as a Dragon, she knew, even with the fire scars she’d received over the years on her tigerlike skin.

She noticed in a mirror the beggar was still awaiting his pay. Issindra looked him over, sneering. “What awful things you find to wear out there in the streets,” she said. “Have you no sense of how you look?”

Playfully, she let fire roll down her throat, down the veins in her arm, and out her fingertip. Thin flames glided toward the beggar, wrapping around him, growing, until he was covered neck to foot in a
flickering costume made of fire. Colors rippled in the flames as the beggar stood, terrified.

“Fear not.” The Tiger Dragon smiled. “The flames are kept three millimeters from your skin. Do you not look stylish?” She laughed. “There’s only so much I can do. Oh, stop shivering. I said I wouldn’t burn you.”

Without even looking at him, Issindra pulled the fire back into her finger. She dispensed with him by hitting a button on the floor, unleashing her tigers from the cage under her bed. Out they came, making a terrific racket as they took his one remaining leg. And then they toyed with him, throwing him back and forth, rolling him around. She could see them from the corner of her eye as she looked out at the city.

His misery pleased her and brought clarity to her thoughts.
The hours ahead will take some careful consideration. There is the Japanese Dragon on his way. The Dragonkillers will be on his trail, and mine. Any meeting I have with him endangers my own life all the more…unless I can make it all work to my advantage.

Oh, why not,
she thought arrogantly.
Let’s finish them all in one delicious meal.

She wanted to rest, prepare, and lay out a plan, but there was an awful noise from the tiger feeding. She turned to see the cats having trouble killing the beggar, trying to pull him apart but hardly doing a good job of it. She strode between the tigers, roaring
to force them back, and quickly snapped the neck of the whimpering beggar. Sometimes you had to do things yourself.

The tigers moved in around her warily.

She watched them feed and considered the future.

“W
E’LL SPLIT UP,” SAID
Sachiko, stepping out of her cab.

“I don’t remember agreeing to that,” Taro said, getting out beside her.

“Neither do I,” said Aldric.

She pushed past both of them. “We’ll stay within a four-block radius, close enough to get help if we need it,” she said, holding up her cell phone as she motioned Key to join her.

Taro and Aldric looked at each other.

“Seems reasonable,” they said at the same time, begrudgingly.

Simon glanced at Sachiko’s unusual phone, and whispered to Key, “That’s a weird-looking one. Where’d she get that?”

“She made it,” he answered. “The signal can penetrate anywhere, and it never stops working.”

“Well, what if it
does
stop working?”

“Then we handle things ourselves,” Sachiko answered.

The boys went with Sachiko, who refused any help from the quarreling warriors. As a result, Aldric and Taro were forced to join together as the other Samurai separated into pairs to see the other palaces.

The boys would investigate the area around the Tiger Palace. Simon wanted to lead, but Sachiko smiled and pushed him back rather roughly. He massaged his shoulder, surprised by her strength.

They ended up in an alley filled with well-tailored businessmen, all waiting to enter a tiny teahouse, which was hidden here with no entrance on the main street. One of the men looked at Simon with sunken, yellowed eyes. “The tea is miserable,” he muttered, as if asking the boy for some kind of mercy. “But I cannot get enough of it. Five times a day I come here.”

The scents of bonfires and cinnamon, chimney dust and burned sugar hung in the air. Simon had never known tea to smell so strongly. He and Key looked at each other. Dragonmagic, surely.

Sachiko had the boys sit at a table in the alley with their pets, under an awning made from a tattered
blanket. “Do
not
move from here,” Sachiko told them, “unless you absolutely have to, and even then, think twice. I’m going in.”

She pushed herself through the mass of men, and disappeared into the teahouse. Simon felt nervous being Key’s only protector, but Sachiko would only be away for a moment—if they were lucky.

“I feel like
we’re
the killers. There’s nothing we can do to stop what’s going on,” Simon said. He looked morosely at the crowd. “There’s just too many of them…”

“We do what we can.”

Simon looked at Key, thinking at that moment he looked like Taro. “He doesn’t make it easy though, does he? Your dad, I mean,” Simon said. “When we left him, he didn’t say anything. And he didn’t say anything after the fires in Tokyo. He never says anything to you. He’s, like, pretty tough on you, isn’t he?”

“No. He should be harder on me.”

Simon rolled his eyes.
A glutton for punishment, this guy.

“Is your father any different?” Key asked him.

“A little. I have to look for what he means, not what he says.”
I wouldn’t want to trade, that’s for sure.
“Sometimes, though…when he says something cold, it’s worse than when anybody else does, you know?”

Key nodded. Simon looked at him, waiting for him to say something.

“Taro worries about me badly,” Key said. “He didn’t say anything because he didn’t need to, he has…confidence that I will do the right thing. He just never
gives
me anything to do.”

“You must hate that.”

“I think in America you might use words like ‘hate’ very easy. My father tries to keep me safe, that’s all. He doesn’t want any mistakes. See, look at me…. Here is my situation. I’m Caucasian, and I’m Asian…”

“A little something for everybody.” Simon smiled.

“Well, you may see it that way, but in Japan, not everyone does. My father thinks I’m…there is a word for it. Damaged goods. But at the same time, he thinks I am some kind of great treasure that has to be protected. He’s almost as bad as my mother. He is always with me. If I were to fall from this chair right now, one of them would be here to catch me.”

“That’s a good thing. I never had that.”

“Hmm. Does that make you…enjoy being alone?”

“It makes you stronger.” Simon tried to look into the busy teahouse. “I can’t see your mom in there. She should’ve let us help her. She’s brave, you know. Or else…crazy.”

Key frowned.

“Even Akira stays with a partner,” Simon observed. “And he’s always the first one in, right?”

“Akira first, the front edge of the sword. He guards my father, because my father is the best at strategy. Mamoru is last, the hilt, the tireless one. Last one out, as well.”

“But your mother fights alone if she needs to. We would never do it that way. Magicians are too valuable.”

“And your father has gotten used to fighting alone.”

“He lost everyone else. Anyway, you’re wrong.
I’m
with him. I fight beside him.”

“It is amazing that works for you. He does not seem able to work with people.”

Simon wanted to change the subject. “We should go in after her,” he said.

“She has not been gone very long.”

“How long does it take for a Dragon to strike?”

“She said not to move,” said Key.

“Then we should get help,” said Simon.

“She did
not
tell us to get help,” said Key.

“So what? She could need us. She’s your mother.”

“Which is why I am doing what she told me to do,” Key answered, and he leaned back in his chair, eyeing Simon calmly.
I am not getting in trouble.

“You know what happens to rule-followers?”
asked Simon. Key made no move to answer. “They die really old, and they never realize that they never really
lived
.”

“If they never realize it,” said Key, “then they die happy.”

Simon blew out his cheeks. “She’s in there right now. Probably getting eaten alive by some creation of the Dragon.”

Key said nothing.

“Some kind of giant reptile,” mused Simon. “Or a spider. She’s probably being swallowed by a massive spider with acid dripping from its jaws.”

Key’s face held no expression.

“…and pieces of her,” said Simon, “are now disappearing into the spider’s stomach.”

Key did not move. He had been given his orders. The orders had not changed.

“What kind of stomach does a spider have?” he asked Simon.

Simon was irritated. “I don’t know. All gross with parasites and—”

“Tourists?” said a voice, but this time it was a young, quite beautiful Indian girl, maybe fifteen years old, with striking green eyes. She stood over their tiny table in the alley with an expression that was half excited, half superior.

“We are tourists,” said Key, “who are sitting at this
table and not leaving it.”

Simon frowned at him.

“That’s too bad,” said the girl. She had Englishman’s English, proper and polished. “Not much to do here in this alley, unless you’re waiting for a look at sweatshops. That’s all there is here.”

“Well, there is
you
,” said Key.

Simon could see the girl enjoyed the remark.

She smiled at them. “I can show you something quite amazing, if you have the money,” she said.

“How
much
money?” asked Simon.

“You should be asking, ‘how amazing?’”

“All right, then. How amazing?”

“You have never seen anything like it,” she promised. “If you are here in this part of the city, you must enjoy seeing the unusual, the exotic. The nasty.” She snarled playfully on the word, and suddenly the sari she was wearing began to
move
, her blouse shivering, shimmering, and Simon nearly gasped as a large red snake emerged near her neck.

Tsssssss
.

The snake was still half hidden in her clothes, its head craning out to stare at Simon. Fenwick leapt to attention, and Key’s bobcat tensed.

Interesting. Did this girl have something to do with the Dragon?

“Not afraid of snakes, are you?” asked the girl.

“Oh, no,” Simon answered coolly. “In fact, we’re in the snake business.” She looked at him oddly. “Pets,” he followed up.

“If you like unusual animals, you’re going to love what I have to show you,” she said. “I know where you can see the most dangerous animal in the world.

“Come with me,” she added enticingly, and wandered off down the alley.

She was so incredibly pretty. Simon looked at his cousin.

“I am not going,” said Key.

“I am,” said Simon. And he started after the girl. “And if I die somewhere out there by myself, your mother won’t be happy that you let me go off alone.” Key looked angry, but he rose from the table to follow him.

They headed down the alley. If Key decided to pass the blame later, so be it. Either way, Simon wasn’t going to miss out.

He was going to follow that girl.