The Musashi Flex (32 page)

Whatever else it was, it was interesting. And she wasn’t likely to have the Confed stomping in and leaving bodies in any case, which was a pleasant change from a lot of her assignments.

Was there a risk? Sure. But life was about risk. Without that, how boring would it be?

So, she wouldn’t fly. Not just yet.

 
Mourn was working on the ninety-first step, enjoying the sweat and ache in his muscles from getting something new and different just right when a sudden thought came to him:

Kiley, the old man. He had moved to Koji five or six years ago. Was he still around?

Of a moment, he felt a desire to know. He couldn’t say why, exactly, only that it seemed important.

He went into the cottage. Cayne sat in front of her computer, a one-sixth-scale holoproj lit over the desk. She looked up. She appeared tired to him.

“You okay?” he asked

She rolled her head, stretching her neck. “Too long sitting in one spot. I need a break.”

“Me, too. Is the house com working?”

“Far as I know. Who you gonna call?”

“An old friend, if he’s here.”

Mourn went to the com and lifted it. “Directory,” he said.

“Go ahead,” a pleasant and probably artificial female voice said.

“I need a listing for Akeem Kiley.”

The pause was almost imperceptible. “We have an Akeem Kiley, Bladesmith, listed in Shtotsanto. Would you like me to connect you?”

Mourn grinned. “No, that won’t be necessary. Just an address will do.”

The pleasant voice said, “Forty-four Artesian Row, street-level shop, second-level, personal residence, Hotai District.”

“Thank you.”

“You are welcome, sir.”

Cayne looked at him. “Want to go visit a local store?”

“Something I can use in my project?”

“Oh, yeah. The best knifers in the Flex all own blades made by Akeem Kiley.”

He saw the interest replace the fatigue. “I’ll get my slippers on.”

“I’ll call a hack.”

 
Sola enjoyed the ride—it really was a pretty town, in a quiet, back-planet kind of way. As many people walking or riding trikes or spinwheels as were in flitters or wheeled carts. Lot of them smiling. Lot of children, too.

Well, when you had a connection to your god, little things didn’t worry you all that much, at least not that you could tell by looking around here. No sign of brewing religious wars evident.

“We have arrived,” the human driver said.

Mourn paid the man with a handful of hardcurry coins, was thanked for the large tip. They got out.

The shop front was small, maybe five meters wide, with a single window to one side and a door to the other. Natural wood, or something that looked just like it, almost blond, with some kind of oil or shellac on it as a protectant.

The upper level looked to be much larger, though it was hard to tell from the front how much of it belonged to which street front.

No sign identified the place, not that she could see.

She mentioned that to Mourn.

“He doesn’t need to advertise. People who know who he is and what he does, they can find him. Anybody else? He doesn’t want their business.”

In the window, on a block covered by what appeared to be black velvet, was a knife. It had a white handle that looked like some kind of ivory, the blade was a striated gray, watery patterns in the steel. The guard was black, a small oval as thick as a ten-stad coin, probably ceramic, maybe denscris or metal. The knife was small, just big enough for a medium-sized hand to grip the handle, and the blade no longer than Sola’s middle finger.

“Nice,” she said. She had seen a few blades since she’d started this project.

“Nice? Seven or eight years ago, it would have cost you maybe two thousand stads. Probably two, three times that now.”

“Five or six thousand standards for a
knife
?”

He laughed.

“Who has that kind of money to spend?”

“You’d be surprised. But just having the money isn’t enough. Doesn’t matter how rich you are—he won’t make you a knife unless he thinks you deserve it.”

“Deserve a
knife
? Who the fuck does he think he is?”

“He’s a man who can sell every knife he builds for thousands of stads—and who has people lined up on a waiting list that’s ten years out. Last time I checked, anyway.”

“No way.”

“Come on. I think you’ll enjoy meeting Kiley. He’s an . . . unusual character.”

If the outside of the shop was bare, the inside was more so. The room was empty, save for a small workbench, some tools, and an extremely old man sitting on a three-legged, saddle-shaped stool at the bench. He didn’t look up as Mourn and Sola entered.

Mourn held a hand in front of her. Sotto voce, he said, “Wait a second. We don’t want to break his concentration.”

“We could be here a while, Mourn,” she whispered back, “before he ever notices us.”

“He knows we’re here. And he knows who we are—at least he knows me—otherwise, we’d never have gotten through the door.”

She looked at him.

“Frowning like that will give you premature lines in your face,” he said. “You’ll see why you don’t want that in a minute.”

She looked at the old man. He was white-haired, what there was left of it, and his skin was very dark, almost bluish. He wore a ragged coverall and moccasins, and a leather apron. He held a partially finished blade on the bench and applied a file to it in long, slow, even strokes. She could hardly see his face from this angle, but his hands were knobby and scarred.

A minute or so passed. He put the knife down and turned, the saddle seat pivoting, so that he faced them.

God, he looked to be about five hundred years old—had enough wrinkles on his face to make a busload of teeners look aged.

“Mourn.”

“Maestro. This is Cayne Sola. Cayne, Akeem Kiley. Best knifemaker in the galaxy.”

The old man smiled, and the wrinkles deepened. Seamed, lined, creased, as if his face was pliable leather folded into a grin a million times, so many times that any other expression would seem not quite right.

What a strikingly handsome man he must have been in his youth,
she thought.

“Careful, the old fart will try and seduce you, and if you buy that smile, he’s halfway there already.”

She looked at Mourn.

“He’s right,” Kiley said. “What does a woman with your beauty and obvious charm see in a wastrel like Mourn? He doesn’t deserve you.” The gigawatt smile flared again. Great teeth for a man his age.

She grinned back. Kiley had to be eighty, ninety years old, and he exuded a smoldering, smoky pheromone so thick you could almost touch it. At his prime, she expected he would have had her out of her pants by now—all he’d have had to do was ask and she’d have shucked them as fast as she could.

She’d felt that energy a couple times in her life. Once, it was when she’d interviewed a famous pornoproj entcom star, a man noted for several things, not the least of which were his physical endowments. Another time, that flare of primal do-it-now sex had come from a woman about whom she was doing a story, an athlete who was a champion sprinter. Both times, it had been all she could do to keep herself from leaping upon them in pure lust. Neither time had it gone any farther than the unspoken and unacted-upon desire she’d felt. How would it feel, to have that kind of effect on people? You’d have to know it was there, and you’d have to think about using it . . .

“What are you carrying?” Kiley asked.

Mourn pulled the curlnose case from his belt and handed it to the old man.

Before Kiley opened it, he inspected the outside of the leather case. “Nice work. Joseph Tandy?”

“Chas Clements, Earth.”

Kiley nodded. He opened the case and removed the little pair of curved, ring-ended knives. Mourn had showed them to her, and told her what they were—she had it in her recordings—but the name escaped her.

Kiley put the case down and examined the little knives, turning them individually, putting them together, slipping his forefinger through the rings, spinning them around the digit in unison.

He put one in each hand, gripped them lightly, and closed his eyes. A small smile played. “Shiva Ki,” he said. “Cable pattern weld
kerambits
. Ki puts good combat into his stuff. First-rate.”

Mourn said, “Yep. Knowing I got the case on Earth gave it away. You did miss the case’s maker, though.”

“Leather isn’t my area of expertise, Mourn.”

“Just pointing it out.”

“I heard you were on Earth a while back, studying
silat
. Fine knives in that art.”

He wiped the blades with some kind of oiled cloth that gave off a musky, pleasant scent. Sola reached for the memory: sandalwood? Kiley put the knives into the case, shut it, handed it back to Mourn. “I made a
keris
once, as an experiment. Not a very good weapon for real-time work, though you can do some nice patternwork for the magicks. Did a little
pisau
once, too. Never tried
kerambits,
nobody ever asked.”

“What are you working on?” Mourn asked.

“Drop-point hunter for a guy wants to stalk great cats,” he said. “Probably wind up on the floor of a bamboo thicket somewhere.”

Mourn chuckled.

Sola said, “I’m missing the joke.”

Mourn said, “The Maestro doesn’t think that hunting great cats with a knife is a survival characteristic.”

“So you think your handmade expensive knife is going to be found next to the remains of the guy who bought it?”

“Great cats don’t leave many remains, as I understand it,” Kiley said, “and it might never
be
found, but, generally, yeah.”

“Isn’t that a . . . waste?”

Mourn laughed and shook his head.

“What?”

“Start the old bastard down that road? He’ll talk your ears off.”

“Pay no attention to Mourn, he can barely crow his fly shut after he pees without pinching his willie. You being a bright and beautiful woman, I’ll tell you my secret: I make knives for people who will use them. Fighters—like Mourn used to be—hunters, soldiers, cools, field medics, emergency workers. I expect my blades to be pulled and used frequently, and if you plan on mounting one on a wall in a trophy case and pointing at it when company comes? I won’t make it for you.”

“How can you tell?”

Again, the dazzling grin. “That’s the right question, fem. Not ‘Why?’ but how I can tell.

“How it works is, you come and see me and we talk. I believe you are right for the blade, I’ll make it for you. Well, at least that’s how it used to go. Now, I’m slowing down, I have to finish the orders I have, so I’m not taking any new ones.”

“But even so, if you know the man who buys your knife is likely to die?”

“That’s his choice. He wants to go against a cat half again as big as he is, using only a knife? He deserves the best tool he can get for the job.”

“And that’s your knife.”

“Yes. If he fails, it won’t be because his blade couldn’t do the job. So it’s the try that counts. Win, lose, draw, doesn’t matter what happens after, only that he was willing to
try
. Those are the people who deserve my work.”

“Do you mind if I include this in my documentary on the Flex?”

“We can talk about it,” he said. “Over dinner, maybe?”

“Will you stop hitting on my woman?”

Kiley kept looking at Sola, as if willing her to himself. Even as old as he was, she could feel the pull. What really struck her, though, was what Mourn said:
my
woman? She almost grinned at how much she liked the sound of that, despite the possessive nature of it. She wasn’t a slave, she didn’t
belong
to anybody. Still, she understood what he was saying. And liked it. A lot.

Kiley said, “From what I hear, you might not be around much longer. Shame for the gorgeous fem here to be all alone after you’re gone. She needs somebody who’ll appreciate her.”

“Somebody who has the
capability
to appreciate her, which would let you out,” Mourn said. He looked at Sola. “He has three wives he can’t keep happy.”

“Four, now,” Kiley corrected. “Ask them if they have any complaints.” Again the fat-cat-happy grin.

Mourn shook head. “I take it that you’ve heard the story of my match with
Primero
?” Mourn said. His voice was dry.

“One version of it.” Now he turned from his come-hither look at Sola and looked at Mourn. “You don’t even know about the Gathering, do you? Crap, Mourn, you’re getting careless in your old age.”

Mourn said, “A Gathering? Here?”

“What is a Gathering?” Sola asked.

“When a bunch of high-ranked Flex players wind up in the same place at the same time,” Mourn said. “Could be accidental, but usually, it’s intentional. Lot of fights generally ensue.”

“Numbah One Hisself is coming to our world, and where the shark swims, so swim the remora.”

“Weems can’t know I’m here.”

“
Primero
has access to a lot of information,” Kiley said. “And it could be just a coincidence, though I have to say, given what I’ve heard about your last meeting, I doubt it.” He looked at Sola. “You were there. Did you get it recorded? I’d love to see it.”

“We’ll leave,” Sola said. “Be long gone when he gets here.”

“Ah.
That’s
how it is.”

“What?” she said.

He just gave her a tiny version of his magic smile. “Some lines even I won’t cross.”

“No,” Mourn said. “I’m almost ready. Maybe four, five more steps.”

Kiley lifted his eyebrows. “Steps?”

“I’ve been working on a system,” he said. “Something new. It’s positional.”

“Good enough to take
Primero
?”

“In theory. Won’t know until we get there.”