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"Or it shouldn't be able to."
"It's a new process& or rather an old one, redis-covered about twenty years ago
by Lord Takaun."
Grant eyed first the katana then her with suspicion. "Kiyomasa said the old
sciences had been lost."
"A century ago, most of them had been. But not all of them remained so." Her
dark eyes peered at him, glittering through the slits in her visor. "Did
Kane-san reveal everything about your Magistrates and your barons?"
Grant forced a chuckle. "Point taken."
Shizuka turned to Odo and Jozure, addressing them curtly. They took hold of
the Magistrate and his sev-ered arm, dragging bom out of sight into a tangle
of shrubbery. The four people then resumed their circuit around the walled
courtyard.
This time Grant assumed the point position. If they encountered another
sentry, the sight of a man in the black armor wouldn't instantly drive him to
the at-tack. Their progress was achingly slow, since they had to pick their
way over a scattering of broken ma-sonry, most of it butting up against the
wall.
He heard a voice call out in a hoarse whisper, "Claremont, is that you?"
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Grant turned slowly, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice. A hedgerow
rustled a dozen yards to his right, and a Magistrate stepped out, this one
wearing his helmet. Grant didn't recognize his jawline or voice so he mumbled
a monosyllabic acknowledgment.
The Mag accepted the mumble as an affirmative and strode toward him, saying,
"I'm so sick of this shit.
Nobody's following us, so why can't we keep moving? Do you have your canteen
with you ?"
The man was so intent on venting two days' worth of accumulated frustration it
wasn't until he stood nearly toe-to-toe with Grant that he realized he wasn't
addressing Claremont. His litany of complaints abruptly ceased, and he opened
his mouth and raised his Sin Eater simultaneously.
Grant's left fist hammered upward, catching the Magistrate under the jaw,
twisting his head back bru-tally on his neck. The impact of the uppercut
dropped the man to earth without a sound. Grant was not as fast as Kane, but
he was a good deal stronger, and when he struck, he usually struck only once.
Shizuka, Jozure and Odo swiftly stepped over to him. Wryly, she said, "Your
technique may be straightforward to the point of crudity, but I can't ar-gue
with the effect."
The tip of Jozure's blade lightly touched the narrow strip of flesh visible
between the Mag's high-collared undersheathing and his helmet, probing for the
carotid artery.
Grant snapped fiercely, "No!" and launched a kick at the katana
. Jozure snatched it away with lightning speed, causing Grant to stagger. The
Tiger of Heaven instantly assumed an offensive posture, sword posi-tioned for
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a double-handed stroke.
Struggling to compose himself, Grant said sternly, "No killing of the guards
unless absolutely neces-sary."
He felt the pressure of Shizuka's penetrating eyes upon him. She asked, "Is
this a man you know?"
Grant shook his head. "He's only following orders, like Kane and I did when we
were officers like him.
He probably didn't want to take part in the massacre of the settlement, but he
had no choice."
Directing violence against members of his former brotherhood still caused
Grant pangs of guilt. He re-tained vividly unpleasant memories of the
firefight with Cobaltville Mags when he, Kane, Domi and
Brigid made their escape. They were not memories he relished.
Grant said nothing more, though he sometimes questioned himself about his
reluctance to kill
Mag-istrates when they would have no such qualms if the situation was
reversed. The Magistrate
Division, for all of its many faults, had been the only true home he had ever
known. It was where he had grown to manhood, where his personality and
identity had been formed. No matter how far away from the
Division he might run, both in distance and experience, he could never
completely outdistance its oaths and its disciplines. In the remote recesses
of his mind, the division was his home, not Cerberus.
Bending over the unconscious man, Grant swiftly disarmed him, appropriated his
Copperhead, searched through the pouches on his web belt, found the nylon
cuffs that were part of standard Mag equipment and bound the man's wrists
behind him.
He fashioned a gag with the man's web belt and made sure he couldn't comcall
for help by removing his helmet. The Magistrate looked frighteningly young,
almost like a child. And there was something vaguely familiar about his soft
features. Grant dragged him deep into a brush-clogged thicket by the ankles,
acutely aware of how foolish his humanitarian efforts appeared to the samurai.
Shizuka's posture telegraphed impatience. "Let us waste no more time."
Although he wanted to, Grant did not object to her autocratic tone. As he
began walking again, static hissed into his ear and Kane's voice filtered
through the helmet's comm-link. "We're set."
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Grant whispered into the transceiver, "We're not. Stand by for my signal."
With a note of impatience in his tone, Kane re-sponded, "Standing by."
It didn't seem likely they would come across any more sentries before they
reached the entrance to the courtyard. Pollard had obviously stationed two on
the north side and two on the south. He only hoped Ki-
yomasa would dispatch the ones on that side effi-ciently and silently.
Almost as soon as the thought registered, the quiet of the night was torn
apart by a scream of terror and the staccato roar of blasterfire.
Chapter 11
With infinite caution, Kane crept sideways, crouched, listened, but heard
nothing. He stalked along the cor-ridor, aware of the faint sounds of Brigid's
and Domi's footfalls six feet behind him.
He kept close to die right-hand wall, and the two women walked down the center
so they would have a clear field of fire. The plaster on the walls was cracked
where it wasn't broken altogether, and large pieces of it were scattered on
die terra-cotta-tiled floor. Despite the lack of humidity, the air tasted dank
and stale, as if they were creeping through a mauso-leum.
Most of the rooms on either side of the hall showed as black as pitch, but
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