A Nest of Echoes, 2

[Galen]

The two words I'd heard most often since I started looking into the McGinn murder were “Ninja,” and “Horcrux.” Both words were echoes of things that had gone on before I got here.

I knew about Ninja already, of course, more or less. Stealth-fighters, trained in particular Tokunoese fighting techniques. There were a fair amount of them in Felucca, Aranel's sister had had some of the training, less in the other facets, but there were still some. But, in the context of looking into the McGinn murder and related events, the term implied something a lot more specific. To many, “Ninja” and the “Blue Lotus Clan” were nearly synonymous.

I knew only a very little of the Blue Lotus Clan other than that, based on recent experiences, they were a very respectable school of Ninjitsu; the fighters I'd encountered that they'd trained were proving to be quite deadly, and more than once only my long experience in the field had saved me. Some things cannot be taught, even in Tokuno, where formal training in combat is rarely matched in Britannia.

The Lotus was alleged to have some some kind of relationship with the Empress of Tokuno. Exactly what relationship was was ambiguous to me, but then again relationships in Tokuno were always ambiguous to me. Tokunoese culture was a mass of contradictions. It was a very beautiful culture in many ways. They had long-ago reached heights in art, mathematics, combat, and other fields that Britannia had only matched during my lifetime. Their culture and their people were, in some ways, quietly honest in an admirable way. They were not showy with their honesty as we Britannians often were.

But at the same time, large sections of their culture were founded on pretense and conformity. There was an old staying there that I had long-detested: “The nail that's sticking up gets hammered down.” It was a reminder for people to keep their place, to not strive for more, to not point out the obvious. In certain circles in Tokuno, a man could rise very far simply by supporting another man's obvious delusions. Grand Marshal Polynikes, when I'd warned him about my stirring the nest of echoes, had told me he'd prefer the truth even if it were unpleasant. A similar man in Tokuno might, might, have given a different answer, and considered himself all the more virtuous for it.

One result of the stress on pretenses was that, in Tokuno the truth was sometimes the hardest thing to discern. Especially the truths of relationships, those complex webs that tied people together and tore them apart.

And the Horcrux....I had to look into that. I had at best the faintest idea of what it was, what it did, who wanted it it, where it had come from, or any of the basic things I'd need to know to get in front of this matter somehow. All I knew for sure was that I'd been told people wanted it, would kill or maim for it, and no one would admit to knowing where it was.

If we considered what I didn't know for sure, but thought I knew, there wasn't much more. The last time I'd heard the term “Horcrux” used, it didn't refer to one particular item, but to any item that had been imbued with the right magic in the right way. Horcruxes had something to do with achieving immortality, that most arrogant of human goals. Wasn't it funny that humanity, and the other other short-lived races, were willing to sacrifice so much for immortality. The longer-lived races knew better than to want it.

But I had no idea really what “Horcrux” meant in this context. For all I knew it could refer to something totally different from what I knew.

Humanity had many means available to it of trying to obtain immortality. Besides the Horcrux magic, for example, there was the blood-curse of Vampirism. And we all knew how well Vampirism usually works out. I thought of Erolissi's baby, Abbey. I had intended to leave that matter alone after I'd heard Abbey was returned. But the vampire who had returned Abbey, and likely had taken her to start with, had been spotted in the brigand attacks, alongside the Blue Lotus Ninja. So, I likely wouldn't have a choice. Was Abbey somehow a part of this drama? This little girl whose life had begun as the blood doll of a foul, predatory, half-human, preternatural fiend?

This matter had passed far, far beyond the murder of a bartender and an attempt to humiliate the Grand Marshal by harming those close to him. I tried to think about what I knew, and tried to make sense of it. No matter how many times I turned the facts around in my head I still had only the vaguest idea of what was going on. What I thought I knew included far too many inferences for my taste. I needed more information. All that I knew I knew for sure was that there'd be a lot more corpses and broken lives before this was over.

Echoes. The Blue Lotus. The Horcrux. Abbey. The Vampires of Umbra. Betrayals. The Yew Crossroads. Adultery. Lusts. Resentments. Murder.

It occurred to me that the brigands and Horcrux didn't fit the other elements of the case. Almost everything else here was personal. The Horcrux, and whatever it was that was going on at the Crossroads, felt like professional concerns, not personal ones. They were different; that made them either linchpins or mere distractions. And even if they were distractions, looking into them could prove useful. You could sometimes learn things about your enemies by studying what they used to distract you.

Joylah had warned me I would be stirring a nest of echoes. She was right, of course. But I have to confess that the echoes I'd been most worried about were my own. I'd expected to find out, at the end of the day, that the McGinn murder was mostly new business, for want of a better term, and that the true danger to me would come from within, from the ghosts of my own past looking into the matter stirred up.

I was wrong. The more I looked, the deeper I got, the further away from the McGinn murder itself this matter went, the more other people's echoes I stirred.