46

WE DID THE MASH. WE DID THE.… WELL… YOU KNOW.

The moon was three-quarters full, casting long and deep shadows as Sig and I made our roundabout way to and through the dry riverbed where the Crucible was held. The night air was crisp and cold, heavy with the smell of roasted goat and toasted corn. Somewhere, bagpipes were playing. Nobody tried to separate us or lead me off to a prep area at the checkpoint.

“You’re scheduled for the fourth round,” a human guard with more fluent English than the others I’d met informed me. “You don’t have to report in until the second fight is over.”

I knew Akihiko would have some surprises of his own. Opponents don’t just stay static while you make plans and set events into motion, but I definitely hadn’t expected this: No one seemed to be paying any particular attention to Sig or me at all. Neither the guards nor any of the supernatural creatures around us gave any indications of unusual hostility, though one of the were-hyenas was keyed up and pumping tension into the atmosphere. Sig and I drifted into the Crucible on a tide of random spectators.

The air of normalcy was creepier than a blood-red moon or flaming skulls set on spears would have been.

Booths were being set up, and Sig and I paused to watch some kind of reverse limbo contest. A couple of gypsies had rigged a pole vault bar and were inviting various supernatural competitors to jump over the crossbar without benefit of a pole, periodically raising the height. One of the gypsies was an old man playing the theme to Hello, Dolly! on a guitar. I don’t know if it was the only song he knew or the only English he knew or if the wine on his breath had something to do with it or what, but he kept yelling “rock and roll” at random intervals even though the song wasn’t.

Sig reached out and squeezed my hand. “It reminds me of Paris.”

That was a place I’d never been. “Why?”

“The streets around the big tourist areas at night,” she said. “You’ll see.”

And then she abruptly shut her mouth. It really wasn’t a good time to think about the future or lack thereof. It really wasn’t a good time to be tying each other’s hands up either, and I gently eased mine out of her grip.

We left the contest while something with mandibles was clearly winning.

A nix who kept changing her appearance was selling something she called moonshine for twenty thousand dollars a cup, and from the way the pale liquid was glowing, I’m not entirely sure that the drink’s name wasn’t literal. I looked around, but I didn’t see the entrepreneurial half-elf I’d talked to on the two previous fight nights, at least not yet. I wondered if maybe word that a bad moon was rising had gotten out on the half-elf grapevine.

Some redcaps were getting in a craps game run by a bocor, and I don’t think the dice were carved from ivory. It was hard to know who the bigger idiot was, them for thinking they could win or him for thinking they would lose gracefully. If I’d been a sheriff or a bouncer, I would have broken it up.

“This is almost pleasant,” Sig observed in a tone that was also almost pleasant.

“Almost,” I agreed.

The gashadokuro standing motionless among the gathering crowd weren’t quite as spread out as they had been on the previous two Crucibles, and since I didn’t see any areas free of the damn things, that meant there were more of them.

There was also an increased number of vampires even though the weather hadn’t gotten any warmer. I’m pretty good at spotting weapons under clothing—the bulges, the constricted movements, the odd alignments, the ripple and sway of fabric… and not only were there more vampires around, the pasty-skinned, greasy mothersuckers were armed. It looked like Gustavo and JJ hadn’t been lying about Akihiko recruiting new muscle.

There were also more cunning folk of Asian ancestry milling about, or at least Asian males dressed up as cunning folk, and many of them were suspiciously young, fit, and hard-eyed.

It was the first Crucible where I wasn’t fighting in the opening match, and I actually got to see the schedule of announced fights. Sig was the third fight, listed in a weapons match using bo staves. She was up against a trauco whose fighting name was Jungle Jim. I was the fourth fight and scheduled to go toe to toe with a suiko called Gill Billy. Both fights were even odds.

A suiko? They’re tough, but those fishbowl heads make one hell of an easy target if you know what you’re doing. What was Akihiko on about?

I decided to ask him.

We crossed the bridge to the concrete side of the Crucible, the abandoned industrial remains where Akihiko liked to keep his van. The bridge began to shake ominously when we were almost across it, and I looked back over my shoulder. I didn’t see anything, but I got a strong whiff of oni. The presence of the invisible ogre was almost reassuring.

Akihiko’s main bodyguard, the harionago, didn’t seem pleased to see us, but she stepped aside, her long braids swinging so that the small metal spiked balls in them clacked like a beaded curtain. She was dressed in a lot of protective leather tonight, and blades were sheathed all over her body. Akihiko greeted us with “I’ve been looking for you two. I thought you might have left the city.”

“We pay our debts,” I said.

He didn’t miss the possible multiple meanings. “Good. I didn’t realize that you and Britte were a couple. She didn’t mention it in our talk.”

“I’m afraid I misled you a little. He’s my sidekick,” Sig said.

I thought about objecting, but decided to make her pay for that later. Sig had been disregarded by the onmyouji. She could have her moment.

Akihiko looked at me with the first touch of amusement I’d seen from the man. It was scornful and cruel amusement, but it was genuine. “Indeed?”

“I’m also her front kick,” I said. “And round kick. Back kick. Spinning kick. I’m good like that.”

“What’s going on with the fights?” Sig held up the scorecard. “These look easy.”

“Your sidekick complained that the fights were too hard last night.” Akihiko held up his hands. “So, I tried to be accommodating. Now you’re complaining that they’re too easy?”

“We’re not going to draw out the rakshasa I’m hunting this way,” I said, sticking to my original story.

His eyes were dark pits behind the tip of his lit cigar. “Perhaps.”

Sig gestured at the creatures all around us. “I thought you were trying to give these beings something spectacular.”

The onmyouji shrugged. “I give people what I give them. They can take it.”

“Or leave it?” Sig asked softly.

He seemed to really look at her then. It wasn’t an improvement. “They can take it.”

I glanced around. The gashadokuro around us were motionless, but there were more of them than there had been when we started this conversation. A soft, chill breeze carried oni stink from somewhere behind us, and the way the temperature was dropping probably meant the snow woman was nearby.

“This seems like it would be a really good moment to giggle nervously,” I observed. “But I’m not sure how to go about it.”

Sig decided to leave and abruptly turned so that the harionago crowding her from behind had to step to the side or get shouldered. I bowed respectfully, and Akihiko bowed back, even though we didn’t really respect anything but the danger that the other represented. That might be a guy thing.

“Well, that was productive,” I said as I rejoined Sig.

She just grimaced, tension coming off of her shoulders.

We drifted to the edge of the dry riverbed, scouting out the crowd on that side of the Crucible, just moving and staying alert. We didn’t know what else to do, or at least I didn’t. If Sig had a definite purpose, she was keeping it to herself. Waiting for the first fight was maybe the longest hundred years of my life.

I mean twenty minutes.

When the kitsune addressed the crowd, her first words were “LADIES! GENTLEMEN! OTHERS! TONIGHT, WE HAVE A SPECIAL EVENT FOR YOU! A DEATH MATCH THAT IS NOT ON THE SCORECARD!”

Of course they did. Sig and I kept drifting among the crowd. They were going to try to make Sig and me fight each other to the death. I’d been expecting this, was ready for it. I headed toward a gashadokuro who was standing motionless at the edge of the trench. If it started to move, I was willing to bet I could reach its swords before it could.

“WE ARE PROUD TO INTRODUCE A NEW FIGHTER!” the kitsune continued. “THE MAGNIFICENT JEANIE! AND HER OPPONENT, AN UNFORTUNATE SOUL WHO TRIED TO DISRUPT THE CRUCIBLE!”

Wait. What?