“My lookout saw them before yours did!”
Gray Wolf was directing the other Kagé, the old woman’s voice calm as a millpond, hard as folded steel. “You all know the protocols. Check your drop boxes for word, speak to nobody until you hear from us. Move, move!”
Kagé were already scattering up the different stairwells into the neighboring buildings, a few casting baleful glares at No One as they left. The big man was still in her face, anger plain in his eyes. Gray Wolf poked him in the chest to get his attention.
“I said get out. Go! Take No One with you!”
“Are you mad?” the Huntsman growled. “I’m not taking her anywhere.”
“Wait, you think I sold you out?” No One was incredulous.
“This raid is coincidence, then?”
“If I wanted to give away the safe house, I could have just told the bushi’ where you were! I’d have to be an idiot to come here on the day they raided you!”
“Maybe you are an idiot,” the big man said.
A defiant scowl. “Pardon me, Huntsman-sama, but maybe you can kiss my—”
A cry of pain from upstairs, the percussion of running feet. Blades being drawn. Steel on steel. Roared commands to halt in the Daimyo’s name. A flurry of multicolored profanity from Butcher. Gray Wolf slapped the big man on the arm.
“I said get out right now!”
“What about you?”
“I can take care of myself,” the old woman said. “This girl is our only road into the palace. We need her. Make sure she gets away safely, Huntsman.”
The big man cursed, glancing up at the crash of splintering wood, heavy footsteps on the floorboards. Struggling bodies and defiant curses. “All right, come on.”
He grabbed her hand before she could protest, dragged her up the left-hand stairwell and into an abandoned warehouse. Hauling her fast as his limp could take him, through the back door and out into the glare of a rear squeezeway. No One heard breaking glass behind, hoarse screams, a flare of sunburnt light. She felt Daken in her mind, flitting across the rooftops, closing her eye and seeing through his. Bushimen closing in from all directions. Bodies prostrate in the street outside; some lying obediently with their hands on their heads, others bleeding quietly onto broken cobbles. The Huntsman dragged her west along the squeezeway, but she pulled back sharply, shaking her head.
“Not that way.”
“What?”
“There’s too many. Come on.”
The big man paused, reluctant and glacial. But pulling insistently on his wrist, she tugged him back along the thin alley, shrouded in the stink of rat urine. Sleek, furred shapes slunk away at their approach. Empty bottles, human waste, crumpled newssheets. They cut down the crowded brickway, the Huntsman limping hard, No One’s heart slapping the inside of her rib cage as she pulled up her goggles against spears of rusted daylight. Army recruitment posters smeared with white paint; a defiant warning in tall, bold kanji.
ARASHI-NO-ODORIKO COMES.
Out onto a main street, a limping dash across open ground into another alley. Squeezing through the narrow space, knee-deep in refuse, her grip on the Huntsman’s fingers slippery with sweat. Distant shouts. The tune of clashing steel, the thunder of iron-shod boots.
“How do you know where you’re going?” he gasped.
“Trust me.”
On they ran, or ran as best they could with the big man’s limp. His face was twisted, sweat-slick. One hand wrapped in hers, the other pressed to his right thigh, blood seeping through his pants leg. Two blocks later, No One was beginning to think they were in the clear when she heard Daken whisper a warning from above. Moments later, shouts echoed up the street, heavy tread ringing on the cobbles, citizens around them scattering. Two bushimen were charging, naginata spears outthrust, roaring “Halt in the Daimyo’s name!”
The Huntsman cursed, shoulders slumping, pulling his hand from her grip.
“This bastard leg…” he sighed. Unslinging the kusarigama from his waist, he hefted the sickle-shaped blade in one massive fist and nodded to her. “Go on, girl. Best keep running. If you’re the one who sold us out, I pray that Enma-ō feeds you to the hungry dead when you die.”
The big man turned to face the charging soldiers, letting his kusarigama’s chain slip through his fingers, swinging it around his head. With luck he’d take down one soldier before the second skewered him—but there was no chance he’d be walking away alive. No One blinked away the sweat, saw the inevitable outcome in her mind’s eye. The Huntsman sinking to the floor, chest punctured, ribs broken. Running back to her little hovel and little life, cut off from the Kagé as events spiraled out of control …