He scanned the room. The ladies, those dragged forward by their men, and those abandoned in the sudden rush toward the Premier, glittered about. Their 1920s flapper costumes revealing both the wondrous and the corpulent with an equal lack of sympathy. But they too were all either carefully watching the rush to the Premier, or carefully not watching.

  There were just four who were watching the Premier’s Right Hand instead. His Captain of the guard, meticulous in his waiter’s outfit, was nonchalantly poised to strike from his corner like a steadfast rook. The general commander of the World Economic Council’s forces waited like the good knight he was, not obviously aligned, yet always prepared to offer surprise support from unexpected quarters.

  Celia Wirden glittered like the queen that she was. The tight silk revealed a mature woman who had grown into her body the way a yacht grows into a World Cup racer. Her movements could light fire without ever striking a match.

  His body responded from the memory of that one tryst three decades gone, the same night he’d sent her to become James’ first lady. Her green eyes assessed him carefully from her position far across the room near the small orchestra. A chandelier blossomed above her in a font of crystal as if it had bloomed for her alone.

  And off to the side, behind the piano, hid a single junior pawn. Without even the boy being aware, Bryce had been moving him across the board, square by careful square. Perhaps it was time to move the lad one step closer to the far side of the board, where he too would become powerful. Together, many things could be achieved. He would kill the king, take the queen, and create a prince.

  Yes. It was time for the next move.

  Nara, Japan

  A hand descended out of the darkness and landed on Ri’s shoulder. She knew the hand instantly. Only Tinnai, of the whole cadre, dared touch her without warning. Others had learned all too well of her hair-trigger reflexes.

  “I’m ready, Tinnai.” Ri kept her young girl’s voice at a barest whisper.

  Tinnai’s nod was more felt than seen in the darkness. Taking her hand, the cadre leader placed something heavy in it. A pipe. The pipe! Tinnai had been sharpening it for weeks on the concrete. The constant grinding noise now a part of everyone’s dreams. The point shone wickedly. Even in the overcast, moonless night, she could see the glimmer of the steel-bright edge. It was almost as long as she was tall. A fearsome weapon.

  “Tonight. You guide us.” And then, impossibly, Tinnai bowed to her. A shadow upon shadow. Bowed deeply. Honor and respect from the cadre leader. If Ri had still been a young one, she’d have started to cry. But not tonight. Tonight, Tancho Cadre’s fate lay in her hands. There had never been a more important fight. And it was hers to lead.

  She returned the leader’s bow, hefted the pipe to the center of balance, the surface rust rough against her palm, and turned to face along the sidewalk. The cracked concrete beneath her bare feet made her feel more stable. She tried to breathe slowly and shallowly so that the vapor that escaped her mouth into the freezing air would be even less visible in the night.

  Tinnai rested her hand on Ri’s shoulder. In moments the signal passed up the line just as they’d rehearsed. A squeezed shoulder, from girl to girl up the entire line until Tinnai’s hand squeezed Ri’s and they were ready to go.

  Tonight she didn’t run with a small group of hunters. Tonight, the entire cadre hunted the streets of Nara together. Tancho Cadre. The Fighting Cranes. They owned this night. Nineteen girls strong from four to sixteen years old. In the last city of Japan. Maybe the last one on Earth.

  She touched the rough brick of the old wall beside her to make sure of her direction and moved forward. Each crack in the sidewalk an old friend. Walked but twice in a month of planning, once at the beginning to learn, and yesterday to confirm the memory she’d spent four long weeks honing until it sang as a part of her blood.

  Fifty-four paces before she reached out again and exactly touched the corner of the brick wall. Her finger traced the small pocket made by a missing chip at exactly the height of her elbow.

  She turned right and began a new count. The cadre followed in carefully rehearsed lockstep. The air so cold it had little smell. When it blew from the north, the scent of snow and mountains sometimes clawed into Nara. From the south, it smelled of the sea. From the east was the worst. The smell of cooking, of actual food occasionally rose from Daibutsu-den cadre or from the dark mystery of Nara-ken park. But not tonight. Tonight the air hung still and silent, the wind but another creature holding its breath in the dark.

  At fourteen steps, a scuffle by her foot then a squeak as a rat scurried off.

  Ri counted to fifty.

  All was silent.

  She counted to a hundred.

  Still nothing.

  Fourteen. Her foot had been raised for fifteen. She continued her count and the cadre followed in perfect silence.

  At thirty-two she reached out her right hand again and traced the vertical line of the Yen symbol on the steel plaque beside the bank’s missing door. She’d asked Tinnai, but no one knew what it meant, only what it was called and that it had been holy.

  She turned left and headed across the invisible street toward tonight’s target, the one they’d been training to attack for nearly three months. The bookstore lay three and seventeen and two paces ahead.

  One. Two. Three. At the curb, she lifted her shoulder high to warn of a change underfoot then stepped off the curb. Weeks of practicing “Follow the Elder” wearing blindfolds paid off. Tinnai’s hand shifted as the message passed shoulder to hand down the line of nineteen girls.

  Tinnai had berated her for her risks this afternoon. She’d cleared a narrow path through the debris on the street. A little girl, she stood small, even for a ten-year-old, chasing a pretend playmate up and down the street. Hawk Cadre’s guards had watched her with disdain. They’d made a fatal mistake and left the silly little girl alone. For once Ri was glad of her small size. In just four heart-stopping passages up and down the street, she’d managed to confirm her practiced distances and to clear tonight’s path for the cadre.

  She’d had to do it. Rani was clumsy. She couldn’t even do the simplest obstacles in the dark without messing up. She didn’t cry out after the first hunt she’d ruined. But tonight a stumble, even a scuffed foot, and the whole cadre might go down.

  And Tinnai would be far angrier if she knew that Ri had entered the tunnels of the Zenbu beneath the store. A terrible risk, but there she had locked the basement door of the bookstore from the outside, blocking escape. A risk that would cause her nightmares for many nights, if there were more nights.

  Seventeen steps, she raised her shoulder and stepped up onto the opposite curb. Only there was no crack in the concrete beneath her bare foot.

  Think! Had she veered left or right in the crossing?

  She started to slide a foot to the right, searching the surface slick with the night’s frost when she heard it. A rattle of teeth.

  The sacrificial shivering outside the bolthole. The bookstore’s only entry, a knee-high, circular hole. The sacrificial huddled against it for warmth, kept from running away by the chain about his ankle.

  She shifted left a half step, felt the concrete crack beneath her foot, took two steps and kicked out. High and hard. Crushing the sacrificial’s throat before he could cry out his warning. Leaning in and up at the end of the kick, his neck let go as only a break could cause.

  He flopped sideways and Tinnai dove past her into the bolthole. The entire cadre flowed in like a single, long, gutter snake.

  Ri ducked through last. By the time she entered, Tancho Cadre flew forward in full motion through the store. The sacrificial’s chainkeeper had no more throat to cry with than the one he’d held captive. A knife slash had left only the ability to stare wide-eyed as he bled out. Firelight flickered from the back of the store, the towering bookcases dark silhouettes.

  Some of the cadre ran down the aisles. Others had vaulted onto the cases and ran along the tops leaping over gaps at the aisles. At the back of the store, they were only beginning to suspect an attack in full flight. When the ground team met resistance from the Hawks, the high runners fell upon them from above like deadly rain, their long dark hair streaming out behind them.

  Ri raced toward the back of the store. Tinnai and Ninka, Tancho’s best hunter, were in pitched battle with a pair of boys armed with clubs. Then two more joined in, racing up from what must be the cellar. Stopped by the door Ri had locked against them.

  Now they were coming up the stairs behind Tinnai. Perhaps she should have left the door unlocked so that they could escape if they survived the tunnels of the Zenbu. But a free Hawk could seek revenge.

  With a cry, “Behind you!” she swung her pipe at the head of one of the attackers. The weight of it carried it so far into his skull she had trouble freeing it. As he collapsed, the man in front of Tinnai also went down. Even as he died, he lacerated her right arm and it dangled suddenly limp.

  Her knife dropped and she dove to grab it with her other hand. But her recovery roll was wrong due to her injured arm. Blood was a sharp edge to the scent of night, the smoke from the firepit stung her eyes.

  The Hawk Cadre’s leader faced Tinnai. He was man-tall, his chin scraggly with a thin growth of whiskers. His companion fully engaged Ninka, she could do nothing to help. With a feral smile, the leader brandished the longest knife Ri had ever seen. Tinnai was in danger.

  Ri charged. No cry. Nor stealth. Nor thought. She brushed by Tinnai’s elbow and drove the pipe into the leader’s chest. The sharpened, shining point punched a hole right into him, only stopped by the bookcase he staggered against.

  His knife didn’t drop, but he didn’t raise it either. In surprise, he looked down to inspect the pipe protruding from his chest. Then he looked at Ri, just as his heart’s blood, black in the dim firelight, gushed out the open end of the pipe and sprayed all over her. The heat spread through her clothes and burned against her chilled skin. He toppled silently to the side like a stray leaf on the still winter air.

  Tinnai hamstrung Ninka’s attacker and a moment later, Ninka finished him off.

  The bookstore was silent. No more fighting. No shouts.

  Tinnai called roll. Two didn’t answer. Little Rani had killed one Hawk who’d then landed on her and knocked her out against a bookcase. She’d have a good bump for a while, but no worse. Melna was found with a knife between her breasts, but three lay dead around her. An honorable death.

  They all turned their attention to the towering bookcases.

  Books. Books beyond counting. In the flickering firelight another floor could be seen with more shelves.

  “So many books,” Ninka breathed into the warm night air inside the bookstore. “We have enough heat for a dozen winters!”

  Ri awoke in the golden glow of morning light. And shivered. The fire had died during the night into a blackened firepit and the winter cold bit at her. And though the rest of the cadre still slept together in twos and threes, Tinnai’s place beside her was empty and held no warmth of their leader.

  She stirred the black ashes with the point of her pipe. They flaked and rose in nervous flutters upon the warmth of the embers below. These she nursed with gentle puffs of breath that filled the air with a light morning fog that faded away with the heat of the coals. A few pages, torn and placed just so and the flames caught it and curled the paper quickly. She propped a half open book on either side and let the flames lick the pages until they had caught. One more closed book, shoved deep in the coals, would burn long and slow.

  With the fire secure, she pulled on the jacket she’d been lying on. It had come from the large boy with the broken knees. Someone else had crushed his windpipe. The coat fell past her own knees and, while it might be a danger in a fight, she loved the extra warmth. She’d take the risk.

  The bookstore loomed huge, far bigger than their maintenance shed. The area of the firepit and where they’d slept had once held more bookcases. She could see the markings in the soot and blood-drenched carpet. But the Taka must have burned the shelves as soon as they were empty. This left a space big enough to have a fighting practice with half the cadre at a time. The towering rows of shelves ran toward the front of the store.

  A set of stairs exited downward, and last night she’d taken a flaming twist of pages to relock the entrance to the Zenbu tunnels from the inside. Boxes of books were stacked all about the basement. She’d become lost in the wonder of it all until the paper torch had burned her fingers and she’d been plunged into darkness. There were so many books to burn that she’d had a terrible time finding her way back to the basement stairs.

  Yet on the main floor, they had burned barely a quarter of the supply. Ri looked up. Two more floors surrounded the hollow center of the store like great balconies. The morning light shone down from above. Bounty beyond belief. It really seemed that there were enough books to burn forever.

  She was so intent on the blue walls and soft yellow ceilings embracing thousands upon thousands of multi-colored spines and shining covers, that she’d have fallen over Ninka if not for the hunter’s sharp hiss.

  “Careful, Ri. You walk like a newborn who has never seen the world before.”

  Ri rested the end of her pipe on the floor and squatted beside the chief hunter. Ninka’s dark eyes remained hidden inside the hood of her parka, which had once been silvered, but had darkened with large splotches of grime and old blood. She sat on the chain which trailed out through the bolt-hole in the door to the ankle of the sacrificial. They’d found a boy who had merely been knocked out, and chained him last night. Who knew what the Zenbu would do if the sacrificial were not offered. But he was still there, his back blocking most of the cold draft through the hole. Warm to his bare back.

  “What of the others?”

  Ninka looked left and right and pulled back her hood enough that Ri could see how wide her eyes were.

  “All gone.”

  “All?” They had stacked the bodies of the Taka Cadre outside the store. Many more than they’d first thought. It was a wonder that nineteen Tanchos had killed thirty-two Hawks. They’d thought about putting them through the door in the basement, but the risk was too great even if the other side were unlocked. One did not offer the Zenbu passage and expect to survive.

  “Every one.” Ninka looked about again. “I heard them,” she whispered and retreated back into her hood.

  “What did they say? What did they look like?”

  “Sss,” the hiss sounded again. “You are still a child, Ri. Yes, I crept to the door to hear them, but I could not understand a word. It is said they still speak the old Japanese, that they refused to learn Anglese. But one does not look upon the face of the Zenbu and live. You did well last night, but even you would die should you come face to face with The All.”

  “But the sacrificial sees—”

  “The sacrificial is already dead. The All merely bide their time. I am fourteen and have been hunting four years longer than you. None survive who have seen the Zenbu. So it is said and so it is true.”

  Ri bowed her forehead to the carpet, the thick dust clogged her nose, but she didn’t dare sneeze. One did not argue with elders, especially about such a well known truth as the death that lurked in every Zenbu’s eyes. The flush of shame burned at her cheeks. She crawled away backwards to show the abjectness of her apology. Tinnai always said that Ninka was the best. And Ri had questioned their greatest hunter who was far older and far wiser. She even had breasts. Ri had none, still a little girl.

  When she had backed out of sight, she stood and turned away. By chance she’d arrived at the bottom of the staircase reaching up to the next floor. Others scouted it last night, while she helped carry out the dead Hawks. The steps climbed forever upward until finally the high ceiling became the floor beneath her feet. More books ranged about the floor. The shelves all full, the Taka had not burned these.

  High windows. Tall bookcases barricaded the view. Pressing her face against a crack, she couldn’t quite see the sidewalk where they had stacked the bodies, but the litter-strewn street stretched clear and quiet in the morning light. The path she had cleared for their attack had already been partially obscured by leaves and bits of old cloth. Turning back to the room, further exploration revealed a small bathroom with a dry toilet and a shattered sink.

  The third floor seemed so far away, but she forced her tired legs to climb this last flight. She must learn the defenses of their new home.

  The top floor was but a duplicate of the second. Towering bookcases cluttered with the colors of the rainbow. She especially liked the ones with silver or gold that reflected the morning light until they sparkled. Where the bathroom had been below, a metal ladder led upward to a roof hatch. A heavy chain and a rusted lock held it securely in place. Many scrapes and dents marked where the Hawks had tried to break the lock without success. Ri preferred it locked.

  At the street side of the store, great panels of glass let the pink light of morning shine in. Rather than massive barricades blocking cracked and broken windows, Ri stepped into an alcove wrapped in glass on three sides. The charred hulk of the bank filled the block below. Only one or two buildings remained intact on any city block, the rest were shattered or burned leaving only rubble.

  And the rubble had been over-foraged by the survivors of the death of the world. The hunters had to search far and wide to find food. Tales of buildings like the bookstore but with food lining the long shelves were told only late at night in disbelieving whispers.

  From her high window, Ri considered the vast plain of ruined buildings that stretched to the horizon and beyond. Were there other hunters out there in the far distance who did not know of the struggles of Tancho Cadre and their triumph over the Taka?