Seeker

Shinobu waited until late at night, when the Bridge seemed most dead. He found his way through twisting corridors and dark stairwells. Eventually he was among the outer rafters, walking to the very edge like a gymnast on a balance beam.

From there, he could see the harbor and the hundreds of thousands of city lights on either side of the Bridge, more lights than he had ever seen in one place. The ocean water was bright near shore, reflecting the glow from buildings so slender and high, they seemed like monstrous blades of grass, waving gently in the night. But here, under the Bridge, the water was dark.

The image of his father was burned into his mind: Alistair with teeth gritted, face contorted in pain, covered in blood and scratches from beating his head against the ground. Again and again he felt Alistair thrusting the hilt of the knife into his open hand, trying, with his last trace of sanity, to help Shinobu. And Shinobu had done nothing for him.

It was John’s fault. The attack was John’s fault. But could he blame John for hating Briac? Could he blame John for attacking them? He couldn’t. He might have done the same in John’s position. He too had dreamed of going after Briac.

And he, Shinobu, was Alistair’s son. He could have given his father mercy when it mattered most, and he’d refused. That had been his own choice.

He put a hand on a steel beam above him, bracing himself as he leaned out over the deep water running with the tide beneath the Bridge. He pulled out the lightning rod, concealed under his clothing, and flung it as far as he could into the depths. Then he leapt to another rafter and another, moving along the outer Bridge structure. When it appeared he’d reached the very center of the Bridge’s span, he took out the athame. He threw it in a high arc out into the night air, then watched as it curved down and hit the water, immediately disappearing from sight.

Let the ocean take them and swallow the memory of those sparks. Let it swallow everything …

He made his way back to the Bridge’s central road, and to the home of Master Tan. After moving up an outer staircase, he looked through the second-story window. Quin lay on a table in a candlelit room, her chest wrapped in a complicated bandage, acupuncture needles with burning herbs at their ends placed all over her body. He could see Fiona in another room beyond, asleep on a couch, bandages around her neck.

Quin had been dead, he was sure of it. When they’d carried her onto the Bridge, she had not been breathing, and she had gone cold. Now her eyes were closed, but there was a flush to her cheeks. As he watched, she even appeared to be speaking.

Master Tan was leaning over Quin’s head, saying something quietly. Shinobu pressed on the window with his hands, sliding the glass up a few inches so he could hear.Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

“Child, child,” Master Tan was saying, his voice like the words in a fever dream, “there is no need for this.” One hand smoothed away the lines of worry creasing Quin’s forehead. “You may forget if you wish … all of it.”

Quin tossed her head from side to side.

“Forgetting is … as simple as deciding, as gentle as sinking into a warm bed,” Master Tan murmured. “Child, you have gone and come back. Reinvention is the gift I can offer.”

Quin’s brow creased again above her closed eyes.

“The choice can be as quick as a heartbeat, or as long as a life. You may leave all of it behind,” Master Tan whispered. “How do you choose?”

A troubled expression crossed her face, and then, as Shinobu watched, Quin muttered something to Master Tan and her features relaxed. After a short time, it looked like she had fallen into a natural sleep.

Was it possible? Could you wipe the chalk from the board and begin to draw anew? Shinobu pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to force out the vision of his father, head bloody, lying on the forest floor.

That was Quin in there, his cousin. (Distant cousin! he had always wanted to point out.) He should stay by her side. Maybe, when she finally recovered, she would see him the way he’d always seen her. After the night when they took their oath, he’d wanted to take her away, but he had not. Now there were too many unpleasant things he would have to remember every time he looked at her. And the truth was, he could no longer see himself the way he wanted Quin to see him. He had gone along on all of Briac’s assignments. He had abandoned his father. He wasn’t the man he was supposed to be.

He would leave. Quin would heal here with Master Tan, and then she and Fiona would be free to disappear into the world somewhere far away, where no one, including Shinobu, would ever find them.

“Goodbye, Quin.” He whispered the words, and then he ran back down the stairs.

He walked quickly off the Bridge and out into the night in this new and strange city where his mother might be waiting for him, and where he hoped it was possible to begin life again.