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      "The Oracle Sword?" Miyuki quickly flipped through her mental catalogue of swords, but she was looking for a grain of sand in the Mojave. "What does it look like? And where does it come from?"
      "That's what I was hoping you could tell me." Clarissa hefted her bag onto her shoulder and locked the library door behind them as they stepped into the corridor. "I've found only four mentions of it, twice from men who saw it but wouldn't say where it went, twice from men who were looking for it but didn't know where to find it. None of them described it, well supposedly one of them drew a sketch, but who knows what happened to it."
      Their path took them along the edge of Strawberry Creek, under a canopy of live oak that offered a pleasant shade broken occasionally by a delicate dappling of sunlight. The big bells of the Campanile boomed to a count of twelve.
      "You said it was a Buddhist thing, though?"
      "Yeah, it shows up all over Asia, but every time it shows up it's in the care of a Buddhist monk or holy man of some kind. He lets the writer see it, touch it, try it out, and then he's off."
      "Ooh, a sword tease." Miyuki briefly contemplated having "sword tease" silk screened on a t-shirt, or possibly a more intimate item of apparel. "Well, I can ask some of the guys. There's all kinds of legendary and ceremonial weapons around, but they have different names in every language. Hey, what're you up to this weekend?"
      "Vitus Bering Explorers' Society dinner's on Saturday. Why, what's happening?"
      "A race, if Jojo gets his ass moving on it." Miyuki had total confidence in Jojo, but his unwillingness to share the plans of their illegal activity more than a few hours in advance hurt her pride. "It's always good to have someone to watch your back."
      "Aw, sorry baby girl. Can't Lyta go?"
      Miyuki briefly related Lyta's sudden overseas deployment that morning, omitting mention of her own accidental public nudity, and the bag of oranges, which she was determined to eat herself.

      The even, dull thunder of a jet engine was one of the sounds that thrilled Lyta more than all others, under normal circumstances, but like all people who truly love driving, she hated being a passenger. Shortly after the C-17 had taken off she had lain down across a few of the inward facing seats that lined the cargo bay and gone to sleep, hoping she'd wake up to the sound of the wheels kissing a runway on the far side of the world, and be spared the interim. She woke up feeling overly stiff, and with the uncomfortable sensation of having been both too hot and too cold, and having only just evened out. Lyta swung her legs around and leaned forward with her head between her knees for a few moments, staring at the metal rollers built into the plane's floor. She needed a glass of water.
      "Well good morning, sleeping beauty." Danny didn't look up from his book. At some point he had changed into an all black version of the ACU, the Army's standard field uniform. There was no name tag, no rank badge, and no insignia except for the American flag, and even this was a low key patch in black and grey. "Or afternoon. It's afternoon in California, no idea what time it is here."
      Lyta picked her way past the small cargo pallet that they had taken on along with the shrink-wrapped helicopter and made her way to one of the plane's few portholes. Far below, the unbroken blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean stretched out to the horizon. Someone had left some MREs and bottled water out for them; she twisted the cap off one of the bottles and drank deeply.
      "So we're going to Korea?" Lyta's eyes met Danny's briefly as he looked up from his book.
      "I have no idea why you would say that." He looked back down at the pages of Hangul for Engineering and Technical Use, a thick volume with a bland cover typical of the Defense Language Institute.
      "North Korea. Otherwise you could get someone to do your reading for you, and we wouldn't need the invisible helo." Lyta brought the bottle up to drink again, but let it hover just below her lips. "Am I right?"
      "Now if I wanted to be a jerk about the whole business I'd say no, we are in fact landing in lovely and charming South Korea." He closed the book and laid it on the seat next to him. "We'll be paying a visit to its evil twin some hours later."
      "Where are we landing?"
      "Osan, I think." Danny flipped open a laptop that was sitting on the seat with his DLI manual. "Yeah, Osan. We'll get a practice run in, maybe some sleep if we're lucky."
      Osan, ROK, had a sprawling market that was centuries old. Lyta wondered to herself if she could buy a live octopus there, and then remembered that she had promised to find a souvenir for Miyuki. Of course, by Osan Danny meant the neighboring United States Air Force Base, a small city in its own right, but wholly separate from its namesake. From the sound of things she wouldn't have time to do anything but prepare for the mission, and not very thoroughly, at that.
      "Do we have any time on the ground afterward?"
      "If it doesn't all go to hell, we'll be headed stateside almost immediately. If you want a bottle of maesil ju I'm sure one of the stores in the BX mall carries it."
      "No, it's not that. I promised my roommate I'd bring her back a souvenir."
      "Your roommate?" It wasn't a question, but a prompt to continue. Danny would know she had a roommate. It was his business to know. Lyta wriggled through the thin gap between the Blackhawk's tail rotor and the with tightly packed equipment pallet in front of it. She sat in the empty seat next to Danny, flipping through the photos stored in her phone until she found one she thought wasn't inappropriate.
      Danny knew Miyuki Shimada as he knew most of Lyta's friends and relatives; as a collection of government data: criminal, driving, and credit records, education and employment histories. She had never been in any kind of legal trouble, and virtually every one of her male ancestors had served in the United States military, from her father back to the Civil War. As a security risk she wasn't an interest, and that was it.
      She didn't look how he had expected. Not that he really had expectations, but his nonexpectations fell into a general swirl of averages; maybe half the city was female, a third were of East Asian descent. Most people are, by definition, typical looking. Miyuki was of mixed ancestry; she was clearly part Japanese, but what was the other part? Indian? Polynesian? Due perhaps to a trick of the light, or maybe the shortcomings of the phone as a camera, her hair appeared to be a dark plum color rather than black, framing a an oval face with graceful almond shaped eyes, that were, surprisingly, green. In the photo she and Lyta were arm in arm at a party somewhere, and both were wearing the sort of cleavage-baring black cocktail dresses that never go out of style. Miyuki's visible left arm, slightly flexed to hold up her drink, looked to be all muscle, rather at odds with her generous chest. She was staring directly at the camera, smiling a smile that was both mischievous and defiant. She had never been in any serious trouble, he decided, because she had never been caught.
      "Cute" He said to Lyta as he handed her phone back, as if her roommate was somehow her doing. "What's she like?"
      "Lots of things. Opera, cars. martial arts, surfing." She had chosen to assume he meant "what does" rather than "what is". "She loves birds."
      "Birds…" Danny stared at the opposite bulkhead for a bit, lost in thought. "Well, I'll see what turns up."

      The India Palace Buffet easily proved its value; buttery curries in yellow and orange vied for space with bright red tandoori, emerald green vegetables, and neat little triangular samosas. Together on a bed of basmati rice, and accompanied by a basket of flat white bread, it was more than sufficient to make up for a night of strenuous activity across the rooftops of Chinatown. Sitting back from the minimal remains of her meal, Miyuki took a long, last drink from her mango lassi, until the air came in the bottom of the straw with a satisfying slurping noise. Clarissa was seated opposite her, finishing a dish of kheer, a milky, subtly spiced rice pudding.
      "You'll remember to ask around? About the oracle sword?"
      "Yeah, I'll ask." Miyuki glanced at the painting of Ganesh that gazed benevolently over their table. It was done in that almost-realistic airbrush style typical of modern Indian devotional paintings that Miyuki found vaguely uncanny. "It would help if I knew something more, it might have a different name in Japanese, if we know it at all."
      "The best account comes from Prince M. V. Obolensky, in his memoirs. He was a royalist officer in the Russian Civil War."
      "I would hope he wouldn't join the Bolsheviks, unless 'Prince' was his first name. I thought we were further east."
      "We are. Let me set the stage for you." Clarissa set her spoon down and pushed the dish aside, as if she was going to use the table surface for something. She was clearly enjoying herself. "It's 1920. The revolution is over, and European Russia is securely Red and will stay that way until '91. The Tsar and his family have been dead for 3 years, and Admiral Kolchak, the closest thing the White movement had to a leader, has been captured and executed by the Reds at Irkutsk. The White armies are fleeing in disorder to Siberia, or disbanding entirely. That's where our guy Obolensky comes in.
      "Prince Mikhail Vasilievich Obolensky was a minor member of a princely family that traces its ancestry back to the founding of the Tsardom of Russia. Most of the family fled the country in 1917, but Obolensky was serving in the Imperial Army at the time, and found himself in the thick of it. Somehow he survived, and retreated east with the rest of the army. But Siberia won't be safe for long, the Reds are consolidating and the rest of the world powers now recognize it as Soviet territory. There isn't really anywhere else to go, so Obolensky heads into Mongolia to join up with the monarchist remnants under the Mad Baron, Roman Ungern Von Sternberg."
      "The Mad Baron?" Miyuki asked as she intercepted the bill, slid in her American Express card, and handed it back to the waiter before Clarissa could intervene, all in one deft movement. "I think I've heard of him before."
      "I think I gave you a book about him for Christmas last year. At any rate, Ungern-Sternberg wasn't a member of the White movement exactly, but he was a die hard monarchist. With the Tsar dead and the Bolsheviks in the driver's seat he moved on to a project of his own; carving out an independent Mongolian khanate, at the expense of the Soviet Union and Republic of China.
      "Under his own control, as I recall."
      "Well, basically. It wasn't as simple as that, it never is, but basically. He started with his Asiatic Squadron of the Russian Imperial Cavalry, and started absorbing all the castoffs and odds and ends of central Asia: Mongolian and Tibetan cavalrymen, Chinese bandits, British adventurers, German and Austrian soldiers taken prisoner by the Russians during World War 1, and then released without being repatriated when the revolution came. Red Russian and Chinese soldiers who he took prisoner were given a choice between joining him and execution, and most joined him. And of course Tsarists who hadn't had enough fighting, or had nowhere else to go flocked to his banner as well, and there you have Obolensky.
      "Now, Obolensky was a romantic at heart, a born adventurer. He was really born fifty years too late; he would have been right at home in the big push for imperial possessions in the nineteenth century. In some ways he found a kindred spirit in Ungern-Sternberg – not to say they were alike, Obolensky was basically decent and Ungern-Sternberg massacred thousands, but besides politics and soldiering they both had a taste for the new and exotic. The Mad Baron's army was accompanied by Mongolian shamans and his wife, a Manchurian princess. He was supposedly in contact with the Dalai Lama and of course the Bogd Khan of Mongolia. Strangely enough, he got his nickname because he decided to become a Buddhist and, in effect renounced his Europeanness, not because he cut a bloody swath across northern Asia."
      "Hey, it's not crazy if everyone's doing it."
      "Just a matter of what people think's important, I guess. Anyway, Obolensky ended up as one of Ungern-Sternberg's officers, in charge of a mixed unit of Russian and Chinese soldiers, and that's where he saw the oracle sword."
      Clarissa reached into her bag and hauled out a thick volume with a blue University Press cover, with so many pages marked with small bits of post-it that they hung off of it like a fringe. She opened it, seemingly at random, only to arrive immediately at the correct place. Miyuki wondered what she bothered marking the pages for.
      "Here it is." Clarissa said, stabbing the page with a thin white finger. The book was a facsimile of the original by a photo process, and the text formed a neat, tight block of Cyrillic. "He says a monk joined them at Urga – that's modern day Ulaanbaatar – and was met personally by the Baron; they had a private conference for several hours. The monk carried a sword with him that he himself never used, but he would loan it to a Shaman, who would draw it, and then dance as if possessed, striking at imaginary enemies. Eventually he would calm down, and, if he had proved worthy, he would tell them something about the future."
      "It's no worse than snake handling. Or Peyote. What happened if he wasn't worthy?"
      "Obolensky implies it killed one of the seers, but it could be the guy shot himself accidentally."
      "Well you know at least he didn't see it coming. Does he ever say what it looks like?"
      "He calls it "orakula sablyei?", the 'oracle's saber'. The monk rode with the army for a while, always in company of a guard of hill men, Obolensky says, carrying the sword on his saddle. You could always tell it on the march because it was decorated with eyes, he says. Beyond that he doesn't say."
      Miyuki sat silently while the waiter returned her receipt. It sounded like a mix of the misheard and misunderstood from a chaotic time in a chaotic place, but it was a mystery, and she couldn't resist a mystery.

      Fifteen miles away, another lunch was coming to a close, one with a different character entirely. A pair of middle aged men sat opposite one another under a Chinese ink painting of galloping horses, the sort of painting that was ubiquitous in mid-priced Chinese restaurants throughout San Francisco's Richmond District. One wore a suit, elegant and well tailored, that when combined with his easy manner made him the very image of a successful financier, while the other, dressed in a plaid flannel shirt and jeans, was possessed of the calm self assurance of a tradesman whose particular expertise has made him indispensable. The pair regularly met for lunch, and the managers of the restaurants they chose always showed them unusual deference, often offering the meal for free, though they always insisted on paying.
      "Unfortunate business, Mr. Sakamoto." The man in the suit said. "About Mr. Chow. A hard man to like, but unfortunate, nonetheless."
      "A man makes his own fortune, Mr. Lau," The tradesman replied, "Mr. Chow's happened to catch up with him, that's all."
      "It was unfortunate that his… affairs were concluded in public." Mr. Lau poured them both a cup of tea from the steel pot, and then set it at the edge of the table with the lid up, the signal for a refill. "Not on my own account, but Mr. Chow had connections. Suppliers and clients, you understand."
      "I'm certain he did. A man like Mr. Chow could have had a heart attack, or car accident, but what would that say, Mr. Lau? Standards must be upheld."
      "Certainly, and his… ah… accounting irregularities certainly should not have passed an audit. He was not beyond reproach, a hard man to like, as I have said. But to keep the peace you were willing to overlook his faults."
      "To keep the peace with his connections you were as well." Mr. Sakamoto slid a regular white paper envelope across the red tablecloth. "For my part, well, a man like him could have had a car accident, and the peace would have been kept. Or fallen from a ladder in a locked room, most accidents happen in the home."
      Mr. Lau opened the envelope and emptied the contents into his hand. The envelope had contained, as he had suspected, the jade that Elliot Chow had been wearing the night he was killed; a mark of his Tong affiliation.
      "I am indebted to you, Mr Sakamoto, for taking care of this particular matter. I hope it does not become burdensome to you."
      They sat in silence for a minute as a waiter replaced the empty pot with a full one, and cleared away a pair of empty bamboo steamer baskets.

      Joe Sakamoto had not expected the interview to prove especially enlightening, but Mr. Lau's lack of candor had at least proven to him that Elliot Chow hadn't died merely because he had annoyed his masters into withdrawing their protection. He turned the problem over in his mind during the drive back up Geary Street, but there was just too little to work with. He would need to get some ears to the ground before the trail went cold. He backed his Toyota pickup into a space in the Japantown Mall's cavernous underground lot next to a Ford Econoline proudly bearing the legend "Sakamoto & Sons, Florist, Est. 1869" and waited a few moments to be sure no one was loitering unnecessarily. One of the many keys on his ring sent the garage elevator down to a subbasement, while another opened a heavy steel door to a maze of steam tunnels. More keys opened more doors until he emerged in another underground garage a block away; it was by no means the fastest route, but it was impossible for anyone to follow him without being very conspicuous.
      In a very short time he was out in the autumn sunshine again, standing before the Sangedatsumon, the gate of the three liberations. A white-hooded sohei detached himself from a nearby stand of trees, and stepped noiselessly into the light, bowing slightly while pressing his palms together in a monastic salute.
      "So-Taisho. Your orders?"
      Joe looked the man over. Like all the brothers militant who guarded the temple he wore a Kevlar vest and modern load bearing gear over the baggy black costume that Japanese warrior monks had worn for centuries. The G36 assault carbine hanging muzzle-down from his three point sling looked new and well maintained, and his eyes, the only part of his face visible through the traditional white hood, were keen and alert.
      "Find Sara for me. I'll see her in the East shoin. And send in Jeff Shimada, when he gets here."
      The shoin of a Buddhist temple complex is a study, for private contemplation on the sutras, or one's own place on the wheel of existence. The temple had more than one, and Joe liked to use them when formulating a plan of action because his mind always seemed to work slightly faster in proximity to the shelves of ancient books that lined the walls. He had just settled himself behind the low table when Sara stepped lightly through a side door, and knelt on the tatami in front of him.
      At some point in her teenage years, Sara Nakamura had realized the power she held over most men, and in consequence she wore her uwagi open at the chest to show as much cleavage as possible, while omitting the traditional baggy pants entirely. She had far too much exposed flesh for a ninja, although the entirety, legs, arms, and chest, were sheathed in a traditional stab-resistant metal mesh. While inside the temple precinct she didn't cover her face, and could almost have been headed for an evening out, if she hadn't carried a short, straight stabbing sword diagonally through the broad sash at her waist.
      "Abbot-General, your younger sister salutes you."
      "Mr. Lau is my friend, after a fashion." Joe said, rolling up his right sleeve. "I apologize to him for the discourtesy of suspicion. You know what to do."
      In a short bound she was behind him, tying off the arm and locating a vein. It was highly unlikely the triads would try to poison him, knowing the consequences, but the outside chance was still a chance. He barely felt the needle's bite at all, and when he looked over Sara had bandaged the puncture and was already undoing the surgical tubing.
      The door slid closed with a soft clack. A young Asian man stood before them, of average height but heavily built, dressed smartly in the uniform of a San Francisco police officer, a set of sergeant's stripes under the golden phoenix insignia on either shoulder. Joe could hear Sara shift slightly beside him, rearranging herself to get the maximum effect from her cleavage. Jeff Shimada shot her a glance, and then ignored her.
      "Abbot General, your younger brother salutes you."
      "Thanks for coming." Joe indicated for him to sit. "I just came from lunch with Mr. Lau. There's something about this that doesn't add up. A lot of things, really."
      "Such as?"
      "Mr. Lau said the Tongs had rescinded their protection because Chow was embezzling, and they wanted him eliminated. If that was true, they would do it themselves, like they always do."
      "What did he say about it?"
      "He said Chow was too well connected to just dispose of."
      "No one's that well connected. There's no bending the rules with them, you steal and you're out."
      "More to the point, if he was that well connected he wouldn't need to steal."
      "So he broke a rule that wasn't a rule, or annoyed the wrong people. Like I said, there's no bending the rules with them, even the bosses can't have a man killed without a good reason."
      "I don't think it's as simple as that. Mr. Lau knew we wouldn't tolerate Chow operating here for very long, protection or no. He could have just waited and Chow would die in a fairly convincing accident, but by giving us a free hand he knew we'd make an example of him."
      "You think he wanted him dead and wanted someone else to take the heat? Making it look like an accident would have been just as good."
      "And then why the warning?" Joe slipped the rosary off his right wrist and clicked through the beads in silence for a few moments. "Mr. Lau said Chow had suppliers. A snakehead doesn't need suppliers, the victims supply themselves. Keep an eye out, and see if the police turn anything up. Someone needs to check out Chow's building."
      "Miyuki can do it. She knows it best."
      Sara let out a brief snort of derision at the mention of Miyuki's name. There was more than a little animosity between them, for reasons no one else could fathom. Joe glanced sideways at her, and she concentrated on her blood sample with studiously feigned innocence.
      "Alright, get to it." Joe sat back as Jeff gave a short formal bow, and left the room. "Done yet, Sara?"
      "All done," she replied, a little too cheerily. "Mr. Lau has decided not to try to poison you today."
      "He never has. Well, there's that, at least."

      On the far side of the world, Lyta stood impatiently by the shrink wrapped helicopter, waiting for the most interminable part of any flight: the senseless minutes between the time the plane comes to a complete stop and the time when the people in charge recognize the fact and let the passengers off. It was far worse on a civilian airliner, of course, but she still breathed a sigh of relief when the light went green and the rear loading ramp started to descend in a rumble of hydraulics.
      It was almost nine in the evening in California, but in South Korea it was not quite two in the afternoon of the following day. After hours of recirculated air conditioning the sunshine out on the tarmac was pleasantly warm, even if it smelled strongly of the burning of various fuels. A neat row of dark grey Fighting Falcons sat off to the right, a checkered band on the tail marking each as a member of the 51st Fighter Wing. A pair of black Chevy Suburbans was waiting for them, as was an Air Force colonel, and an aggressively nondescript man in a suit. In the background a knot of airmen waited silently, ready to roll the Blackhawk into a nearby hangar as soon as the brass cleared out.

      Colonel Davis, for his part, was not content. Looking back on the last twenty four hours the encrypted communications he had been receiving contained phrases that rapidly escalated from "telemetry failure" and "premature reentry" to "DPRK territorial waters" and finally "imperative to national security". The Other Governmental Agency had arrived shortly afterward, the civilian intelligence apparatus that followed the military everywhere, if it wasn't there already. In this instance it took the form of Agent Smith of the CIA. Smith was officially there to "advise", whatever that meant, and so far had mostly stood by nodding agreement to things periodically. After hours of peering with hyperspectral eyes and listening with high frequency ears, a reconnaissance drone sent back an image of divers helping hoist a suspicious oblong onto the deck of a trawler under the watchful eyes of a pair of North Korean patrol boats. Finally the question came down from Combined Forces Command: "what is your estimation of the success of a recovery operation?"
      The Air Force, in the person of Davis' CO, suggested that, political considerations aside, destruction of the target as preferable, and recovery as too difficult to be worthwhile in any practical sense. The Navy, in the form of the captain of the USS Shiloh, now lurking somewhere nearby in the Northwestern Pacific, concurred. He wasn't sure what the Central Intelligence Agency suggested, but the next message from Washington informed them all that a recovery operation had been ordered, and that they were all to give their full assistance.
      It was, then, in the spirit of skepticism that he waited while the Globemaster's cargo ramp descended, revealing the plastic wrapped angular nose of a classified low-observability Blackhawk. A young man walked purposely down the center of the ramp, between the rows of cargo rollers. He was tall and well built, but more like a runner or a swimmer than a body builder. His black uniform had no insignia other than low-visibility American flags in black and grey, and no lettering other than a small neat line of Arabic on the chest of his body armor. An assault carbine hung casually from a three point sling across his chest, barrel down. His hair, like his kit, was jet black, and as he strode toward the parked Suburbans he fixed Davis with a pair of icy blue eyes.
      "Colonel Davis? Special Agent Daniel Murphy." His gaze didn't waver as they shook hands. "Your recon photos must have got someone's attention. Seven A-F Command called Combined Forces Command, which in turn called USPACOM, which then called the Joint Chiefs, who called the National Command Authority. The NCA called me."

      Miyuki had decided that, having driven all the way to Berkeley, she ought to spend some quality time wandering among the used books and collected oddities on Telegraph Avenue, and when her phone rang she was standing between a polished brass Ganesh and a black stone Anubis under the benevolent gaze of an airbrushed Bob Marley, in a cloud of powerful Indian incense. Her surroundings later that evening were a stark contrast to the colorful crowded riot of the Berkeley head shop: a small square room in a Chinatown SRO, furnished only with a futon and a mass produced poster icon of the Amida Buddha pinned to the mottled grayish walls. It wasn't what she would have picked, but the owner of the building had made an arrangement with the people who make such arrangements, and this apartment was kept unoccupied for use as a safe house. For all it's other shortcomings, she could base her nocturnal activities from here without being disturbed. An unshaded bulb hung from the ceiling, bathing everything in its sickly white fluorescence.
      It was hellishly hot. The sun had gone down, but over the course of the afternoon it had baked the room through a single, west-facing window, and the old brick building had retained the heat like a giant oven. Miyuki had opened the window right away, but the air outside was still, and as dinnertime came a hundred hot plates and rice cookers added their steam to a general hot dampness that seemed to seep out of the walls, and up from the floorboards.
      At first, Miyuki tried to ignore it. She hadn't thought to buy herself a book when she had the chance, and sat in the center of the floor, legs folded in the lotus position, hands together in the dhyana mudra, trying to meditate. After maybe an hour had passed, she had stripped to her underwear, after maybe two she was sitting perfectly naked under the bare bulb, her clothes folded in a neat pile on the futon, next to the black duffel bag that had been left here for her.
      She closed her eyes and forced herself to concentrate. Mentally she began to build a mandala around herself, small at first, but expanding, a circle within the four walls of her mind, each with its own gate, within another circle in turn, hemmed in by black clouds, the dark chaos of the unenlightened world. By force of will she pushed the walls outward, the circle expanding to push the darkness back, to the corners of the room, and then through the building and finally out across the city; her consciousness expanding outward to form a preternatural awareness of her environment. She envisioned the vajras, the thunderbolts of enlightenment, pushing the leading edge of the mandala outward, and with it she felt the inner strength welling within her, the spiritual will that was first and foremost in the arsenal of the ninja.
      A fly buzzed near the ceiling. Miyuki opened her eyes, and they locked briefly upon those of the cheap icon pinned to the wall. Then, without warning, she sprung straight up from the floor, her lithe, bare body uncoiling like a striking diamondback. She landed like a shadow falling, and brought her hand up before her face; the fly buzzed between her thumb and forefinger, trapped but unharmed. She released it, and sliding back a step, let fly with a straight-armed, open palmed strike, stopping just short of the hovering fly. The force of the displaced air sent the insect into a corner, dazed and indignant, but once again unharmed. Two more punches and an upward kick disturbed the air enough to send the lightbulb swinging back and forth, casting rotating, elastic shadows around the room.
      Miyuki felt exhilarated and eager to move, but she was also sweating quite a bit; it was well after dark but the room hadn't cooled much at all. Like many SRO units, the bathroom was just a toilet and a sink; the showers were a common room somewhere else. She splashed some cold water from the sink on her face, chest and arms; it was a shock, but deliciously cool, as was the tile floor under her bare feet. She stared into the cloudy mirror as she dried herself with a washcloth. The youthful face that stared back wasn't very intimidating, nor were the slim shoulders or graceful neck, and especially not the soft, nude breasts. She stepped lightly back across the main room to the black duffel bag and pulled back the zipper.
      Out, onto the futon came the stab-resistant mesh under armor, the baggy hakama pants, the cropped, sleeveless, turtleneck top. Out came the characteristic two-toed, sound-dampening nightingale tabi, the nomex gloves, and the innocuous strips of fabric that would become puttees, a headband, and a belt. Out came ballistic plastic kneepads, nylon sports pads for the elbows, and a cloth facemask. Out came throwing knives and stars, caltrops, concealable blades and fiendish pyrotechnic devices, garrotes, and a Swiss made automatic pistol with a silencer and spare magazines. Out came the short straight stabbing swords, and finally, from the bottom of the bag, out came the grinning lacquered wood demon mask.

Description
      "The Oracle Sword?" Miyuki quickly flipped through her mental catalogue of swords, but she was looking for a grain of sand in the Mojave. "What does it look like? And where does it come from?"
      "That's what I was hoping you could tell me." Clarissa hefted her bag onto her shoulder and locked the library door behind them as they stepped into the corridor. "I've found only four mentions of it, twice from men who saw it but wouldn't say where it went, twice from men who were looking for it but didn't know where to find it. None of them described it, well supposedly one of them drew a sketch, but who knows what happened to it."
      Their path took them along the edge of Strawberry Creek, under a canopy of live oak that offered a pleasant shade broken occasionally by a delicate dappling of sunlight. The big bells of the Campanile boomed to a count of twelve.
      "You said it was a Buddhist thing, though?"
      "Yeah, it shows up all over Asia, but every time it shows up it's in the care of a Buddhist monk or holy man of some kind. He lets the writer see it, touch it, try it out, and then he's off."
      "Ooh, a sword tease." Miyuki briefly contemplated having "sword tease" silk screened on a t-shirt, or possibly a more intimate item of apparel. "Well, I can ask some of the guys. There's all kinds of legendary and ceremonial weapons around, but they have different names in every language. Hey, what're you up to this weekend?"
      "Vitus Bering Explorers' Society dinner's on Saturday. Why, what's happening?"
      "A race, if Jojo gets his ass moving on it." Miyuki had total confidence in Jojo, but his unwillingness to share the plans of their illegal activity more than a few hours in advance hurt her pride. "It's always good to have someone to watch your back."
      "Aw, sorry baby girl. Can't Lyta go?"
      Miyuki briefly related Lyta's sudden overseas deployment that morning, omitting mention of her own accidental public nudity, and the bag of oranges, which she was determined to eat herself.

      The even, dull thunder of a jet engine was one of the sounds that thrilled Lyta more than all others, under normal circumstances, but like all people who truly love driving, she hated being a passenger. Shortly after the C-17 had taken off she had lain down across a few of the inward facing seats that lined the cargo bay and gone to sleep, hoping she'd wake up to the sound of the wheels kissing a runway on the far side of the world, and be spared the interim. She woke up feeling overly stiff, and with the uncomfortable sensation of having been both too hot and too cold, and having only just evened out. Lyta swung her legs around and leaned forward with her head between her knees for a few moments, staring at the metal rollers built into the plane's floor. She needed a glass of water.
      "Well good morning, sleeping beauty." Danny didn't look up from his book. At some point he had changed into an all black version of the ACU, the Army's standard field uniform. There was no name tag, no rank badge, and no insignia except for the American flag, and even this was a low key patch in black and grey. "Or afternoon. It's afternoon in California, no idea what time it is here."
      Lyta picked her way past the small cargo pallet that they had taken on along with the shrink-wrapped helicopter and made her way to one of the plane's few portholes. Far below, the unbroken blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean stretched out to the horizon. Someone had left some MREs and bottled water out for them; she twisted the cap off one of the bottles and drank deeply.
      "So we're going to Korea?" Lyta's eyes met Danny's briefly as he looked up from his book.
      "I have no idea why you would say that." He looked back down at the pages of Hangul for Engineering and Technical Use, a thick volume with a bland cover typical of the Defense Language Institute.
      "North Korea. Otherwise you could get someone to do your reading for you, and we wouldn't need the invisible helo." Lyta brought the bottle up to drink again, but let it hover just below her lips. "Am I right?"
      "Now if I wanted to be a jerk about the whole business I'd say no, we are in fact landing in lovely and charming South Korea." He closed the book and laid it on the seat next to him. "We'll be paying a visit to its evil twin some hours later."
      "Where are we landing?"
      "Osan, I think." Danny flipped open a laptop that was sitting on the seat with his DLI manual. "Yeah, Osan. We'll get a practice run in, maybe some sleep if we're lucky."
      Osan, ROK, had a sprawling market that was centuries old. Lyta wondered to herself if she could buy a live octopus there, and then remembered that she had promised to find a souvenir for Miyuki. Of course, by Osan Danny meant the neighboring United States Air Force Base, a small city in its own right, but wholly separate from its namesake. From the sound of things she wouldn't have time to do anything but prepare for the mission, and not very thoroughly, at that.
      "Do we have any time on the ground afterward?"
      "If it doesn't all go to hell, we'll be headed stateside almost immediately. If you want a bottle of maesil ju I'm sure one of the stores in the BX mall carries it."
      "No, it's not that. I promised my roommate I'd bring her back a souvenir."
      "Your roommate?" It wasn't a question, but a prompt to continue. Danny would know she had a roommate. It was his business to know. Lyta wriggled through the thin gap between the Blackhawk's tail rotor and the with tightly packed equipment pallet in front of it. She sat in the empty seat next to Danny, flipping through the photos stored in her phone until she found one she thought wasn't inappropriate.
      Danny knew Miyuki Shimada as he knew most of Lyta's friends and relatives; as a collection of government data: criminal, driving, and credit records, education and employment histories. She had never been in any kind of legal trouble, and virtually every one of her male ancestors had served in the United States military, from her father back to the Civil War. As a security risk she wasn't an interest, and that was it.
      She didn't look how he had expected. Not that he really had expectations, but his nonexpectations fell into a general swirl of averages; maybe half the city was female, a third were of East Asian descent. Most people are, by definition, typical looking. Miyuki was of mixed ancestry; she was clearly part Japanese, but what was the other part? Indian? Polynesian? Due perhaps to a trick of the light, or maybe the shortcomings of the phone as a camera, her hair appeared to be a dark plum color rather than black, framing a an oval face with graceful almond shaped eyes, that were, surprisingly, green. In the photo she and Lyta were arm in arm at a party somewhere, and both were wearing the sort of cleavage-baring black cocktail dresses that never go out of style. Miyuki's visible left arm, slightly flexed to hold up her drink, looked to be all muscle, rather at odds with her generous chest. She was staring directly at the camera, smiling a smile that was both mischievous and defiant. She had never been in any serious trouble, he decided, because she had never been caught.
      "Cute" He said to Lyta as he handed her phone back, as if her roommate was somehow her doing. "What's she like?"
      "Lots of things. Opera, cars. martial arts, surfing." She had chosen to assume he meant "what does" rather than "what is". "She loves birds."
      "Birds…" Danny stared at the opposite bulkhead for a bit, lost in thought. "Well, I'll see what turns up."

      The India Palace Buffet easily proved its value; buttery curries in yellow and orange vied for space with bright red tandoori, emerald green vegetables, and neat little triangular samosas. Together on a bed of basmati rice, and accompanied by a basket of flat white bread, it was more than sufficient to make up for a night of strenuous activity across the rooftops of Chinatown. Sitting back from the minimal remains of her meal, Miyuki took a long, last drink from her mango lassi, until the air came in the bottom of the straw with a satisfying slurping noise. Clarissa was seated opposite her, finishing a dish of kheer, a milky, subtly spiced rice pudding.
      "You'll remember to ask around? About the oracle sword?"
      "Yeah, I'll ask." Miyuki glanced at the painting of Ganesh that gazed benevolently over their table. It was done in that almost-realistic airbrush style typical of modern Indian devotional paintings that Miyuki found vaguely uncanny. "It would help if I knew something more, it might have a different name in Japanese, if we know it at all."
      "The best account comes from Prince M. V. Obolensky, in his memoirs. He was a royalist officer in the Russian Civil War."
      "I would hope he wouldn't join the Bolsheviks, unless 'Prince' was his first name. I thought we were further east."
      "We are. Let me set the stage for you." Clarissa set her spoon down and pushed the dish aside, as if she was going to use the table surface for something. She was clearly enjoying herself. "It's 1920. The revolution is over, and European Russia is securely Red and will stay that way until '91. The Tsar and his family have been dead for 3 years, and Admiral Kolchak, the closest thing the White movement had to a leader, has been captured and executed by the Reds at Irkutsk. The White armies are fleeing in disorder to Siberia, or disbanding entirely. That's where our guy Obolensky comes in.
      "Prince Mikhail Vasilievich Obolensky was a minor member of a princely family that traces its ancestry back to the founding of the Tsardom of Russia. Most of the family fled the country in 1917, but Obolensky was serving in the Imperial Army at the time, and found himself in the thick of it. Somehow he survived, and retreated east with the rest of the army. But Siberia won't be safe for long, the Reds are consolidating and the rest of the world powers now recognize it as Soviet territory. There isn't really anywhere else to go, so Obolensky heads into Mongolia to join up with the monarchist remnants under the Mad Baron, Roman Ungern Von Sternberg."
      "The Mad Baron?" Miyuki asked as she intercepted the bill, slid in her American Express card, and handed it back to the waiter before Clarissa could intervene, all in one deft movement. "I think I've heard of him before."
      "I think I gave you a book about him for Christmas last year. At any rate, Ungern-Sternberg wasn't a member of the White movement exactly, but he was a die hard monarchist. With the Tsar dead and the Bolsheviks in the driver's seat he moved on to a project of his own; carving out an independent Mongolian khanate, at the expense of the Soviet Union and Republic of China.
      "Under his own control, as I recall."
      "Well, basically. It wasn't as simple as that, it never is, but basically. He started with his Asiatic Squadron of the Russian Imperial Cavalry, and started absorbing all the castoffs and odds and ends of central Asia: Mongolian and Tibetan cavalrymen, Chinese bandits, British adventurers, German and Austrian soldiers taken prisoner by the Russians during World War 1, and then released without being repatriated when the revolution came. Red Russian and Chinese soldiers who he took prisoner were given a choice between joining him and execution, and most joined him. And of course Tsarists who hadn't had enough fighting, or had nowhere else to go flocked to his banner as well, and there you have Obolensky.
      "Now, Obolensky was a romantic at heart, a born adventurer. He was really born fifty years too late; he would have been right at home in the big push for imperial possessions in the nineteenth century. In some ways he found a kindred spirit in Ungern-Sternberg – not to say they were alike, Obolensky was basically decent and Ungern-Sternberg massacred thousands, but besides politics and soldiering they both had a taste for the new and exotic. The Mad Baron's army was accompanied by Mongolian shamans and his wife, a Manchurian princess. He was supposedly in contact with the Dalai Lama and of course the Bogd Khan of Mongolia. Strangely enough, he got his nickname because he decided to become a Buddhist and, in effect renounced his Europeanness, not because he cut a bloody swath across northern Asia."
      "Hey, it's not crazy if everyone's doing it."
      "Just a matter of what people think's important, I guess. Anyway, Obolensky ended up as one of Ungern-Sternberg's officers, in charge of a mixed unit of Russian and Chinese soldiers, and that's where he saw the oracle sword."
      Clarissa reached into her bag and hauled out a thick volume with a blue University Press cover, with so many pages marked with small bits of post-it that they hung off of it like a fringe. She opened it, seemingly at random, only to arrive immediately at the correct place. Miyuki wondered what she bothered marking the pages for.
      "Here it is." Clarissa said, stabbing the page with a thin white finger. The book was a facsimile of the original by a photo process, and the text formed a neat, tight block of Cyrillic. "He says a monk joined them at Urga – that's modern day Ulaanbaatar – and was met personally by the Baron; they had a private conference for several hours. The monk carried a sword with him that he himself never used, but he would loan it to a Shaman, who would draw it, and then dance as if possessed, striking at imaginary enemies. Eventually he would calm down, and, if he had proved worthy, he would tell them something about the future."
      "It's no worse than snake handling. Or Peyote. What happened if he wasn't worthy?"
      "Obolensky implies it killed one of the seers, but it could be the guy shot himself accidentally."
      "Well you know at least he didn't see it coming. Does he ever say what it looks like?"
      "He calls it "orakula sablyei?", the 'oracle's saber'. The monk rode with the army for a while, always in company of a guard of hill men, Obolensky says, carrying the sword on his saddle. You could always tell it on the march because it was decorated with eyes, he says. Beyond that he doesn't say."
      Miyuki sat silently while the waiter returned her receipt. It sounded like a mix of the misheard and misunderstood from a chaotic time in a chaotic place, but it was a mystery, and she couldn't resist a mystery.

      Fifteen miles away, another lunch was coming to a close, one with a different character entirely. A pair of middle aged men sat opposite one another under a Chinese ink painting of galloping horses, the sort of painting that was ubiquitous in mid-priced Chinese restaurants throughout San Francisco's Richmond District. One wore a suit, elegant and well tailored, that when combined with his easy manner made him the very image of a successful financier, while the other, dressed in a plaid flannel shirt and jeans, was possessed of the calm self assurance of a tradesman whose particular expertise has made him indispensable. The pair regularly met for lunch, and the managers of the restaurants they chose always showed them unusual deference, often offering the meal for free, though they always insisted on paying.
      "Unfortunate business, Mr. Sakamoto." The man in the suit said. "About Mr. Chow. A hard man to like, but unfortunate, nonetheless."
      "A man makes his own fortune, Mr. Lau," The tradesman replied, "Mr. Chow's happened to catch up with him, that's all."
      "It was unfortunate that his… affairs were concluded in public." Mr. Lau poured them both a cup of tea from the steel pot, and then set it at the edge of the table with the lid up, the signal for a refill. "Not on my own account, but Mr. Chow had connections. Suppliers and clients, you understand."
      "I'm certain he did. A man like Mr. Chow could have had a heart attack, or car accident, but what would that say, Mr. Lau? Standards must be upheld."
      "Certainly, and his… ah… accounting irregularities certainly should not have passed an audit. He was not beyond reproach, a hard man to like, as I have said. But to keep the peace you were willing to overlook his faults."
      "To keep the peace with his connections you were as well." Mr. Sakamoto slid a regular white paper envelope across the red tablecloth. "For my part, well, a man like him could have had a car accident, and the peace would have been kept. Or fallen from a ladder in a locked room, most accidents happen in the home."
      Mr. Lau opened the envelope and emptied the contents into his hand. The envelope had contained, as he had suspected, the jade that Elliot Chow had been wearing the night he was killed; a mark of his Tong affiliation.
      "I am indebted to you, Mr Sakamoto, for taking care of this particular matter. I hope it does not become burdensome to you."
      They sat in silence for a minute as a waiter replaced the empty pot with a full one, and cleared away a pair of empty bamboo steamer baskets.

      Joe Sakamoto had not expected the interview to prove especially enlightening, but Mr. Lau's lack of candor had at least proven to him that Elliot Chow hadn't died merely because he had annoyed his masters into withdrawing their protection. He turned the problem over in his mind during the drive back up Geary Street, but there was just too little to work with. He would need to get some ears to the ground before the trail went cold. He backed his Toyota pickup into a space in the Japantown Mall's cavernous underground lot next to a Ford Econoline proudly bearing the legend "Sakamoto & Sons, Florist, Est. 1869" and waited a few moments to be sure no one was loitering unnecessarily. One of the many keys on his ring sent the garage elevator down to a subbasement, while another opened a heavy steel door to a maze of steam tunnels. More keys opened more doors until he emerged in another underground garage a block away; it was by no means the fastest route, but it was impossible for anyone to follow him without being very conspicuous.
      In a very short time he was out in the autumn sunshine again, standing before the Sangedatsumon, the gate of the three liberations. A white-hooded sohei detached himself from a nearby stand of trees, and stepped noiselessly into the light, bowing slightly while pressing his palms together in a monastic salute.
      "So-Taisho. Your orders?"
      Joe looked the man over. Like all the brothers militant who guarded the temple he wore a Kevlar vest and modern load bearing gear over the baggy black costume that Japanese warrior monks had worn for centuries. The G36 assault carbine hanging muzzle-down from his three point sling looked new and well maintained, and his eyes, the only part of his face visible through the traditional white hood, were keen and alert.
      "Find Sara for me. I'll see her in the East shoin. And send in Jeff Shimada, when he gets here."
      The shoin of a Buddhist temple complex is a study, for private contemplation on the sutras, or one's own place on the wheel of existence. The temple had more than one, and Joe liked to use them when formulating a plan of action because his mind always seemed to work slightly faster in proximity to the shelves of ancient books that lined the walls. He had just settled himself behind the low table when Sara stepped lightly through a side door, and knelt on the tatami in front of him.
      At some point in her teenage years, Sara Nakamura had realized the power she held over most men, and in consequence she wore her uwagi open at the chest to show as much cleavage as possible, while omitting the traditional baggy pants entirely. She had far too much exposed flesh for a ninja, although the entirety, legs, arms, and chest, were sheathed in a traditional stab-resistant metal mesh. While inside the temple precinct she didn't cover her face, and could almost have been headed for an evening out, if she hadn't carried a short, straight stabbing sword diagonally through the broad sash at her waist.
      "Abbot-General, your younger sister salutes you."
      "Mr. Lau is my friend, after a fashion." Joe said, rolling up his right sleeve. "I apologize to him for the discourtesy of suspicion. You know what to do."
      In a short bound she was behind him, tying off the arm and locating a vein. It was highly unlikely the triads would try to poison him, knowing the consequences, but the outside chance was still a chance. He barely felt the needle's bite at all, and when he looked over Sara had bandaged the puncture and was already undoing the surgical tubing.
      The door slid closed with a soft clack. A young Asian man stood before them, of average height but heavily built, dressed smartly in the uniform of a San Francisco police officer, a set of sergeant's stripes under the golden phoenix insignia on either shoulder. Joe could hear Sara shift slightly beside him, rearranging herself to get the maximum effect from her cleavage. Jeff Shimada shot her a glance, and then ignored her.
      "Abbot General, your younger brother salutes you."
      "Thanks for coming." Joe indicated for him to sit. "I just came from lunch with Mr. Lau. There's something about this that doesn't add up. A lot of things, really."
      "Such as?"
      "Mr. Lau said the Tongs had rescinded their protection because Chow was embezzling, and they wanted him eliminated. If that was true, they would do it themselves, like they always do."
      "What did he say about it?"
      "He said Chow was too well connected to just dispose of."
      "No one's that well connected. There's no bending the rules with them, you steal and you're out."
      "More to the point, if he was that well connected he wouldn't need to steal."
      "So he broke a rule that wasn't a rule, or annoyed the wrong people. Like I said, there's no bending the rules with them, even the bosses can't have a man killed without a good reason."
      "I don't think it's as simple as that. Mr. Lau knew we wouldn't tolerate Chow operating here for very long, protection or no. He could have just waited and Chow would die in a fairly convincing accident, but by giving us a free hand he knew we'd make an example of him."
      "You think he wanted him dead and wanted someone else to take the heat? Making it look like an accident would have been just as good."
      "And then why the warning?" Joe slipped the rosary off his right wrist and clicked through the beads in silence for a few moments. "Mr. Lau said Chow had suppliers. A snakehead doesn't need suppliers, the victims supply themselves. Keep an eye out, and see if the police turn anything up. Someone needs to check out Chow's building."
      "Miyuki can do it. She knows it best."
      Sara let out a brief snort of derision at the mention of Miyuki's name. There was more than a little animosity between them, for reasons no one else could fathom. Joe glanced sideways at her, and she concentrated on her blood sample with studiously feigned innocence.
      "Alright, get to it." Joe sat back as Jeff gave a short formal bow, and left the room. "Done yet, Sara?"
      "All done," she replied, a little too cheerily. "Mr. Lau has decided not to try to poison you today."
      "He never has. Well, there's that, at least."

      On the far side of the world, Lyta stood impatiently by the shrink wrapped helicopter, waiting for the most interminable part of any flight: the senseless minutes between the time the plane comes to a complete stop and the time when the people in charge recognize the fact and let the passengers off. It was far worse on a civilian airliner, of course, but she still breathed a sigh of relief when the light went green and the rear loading ramp started to descend in a rumble of hydraulics.
      It was almost nine in the evening in California, but in South Korea it was not quite two in the afternoon of the following day. After hours of recirculated air conditioning the sunshine out on the tarmac was pleasantly warm, even if it smelled strongly of the burning of various fuels. A neat row of dark grey Fighting Falcons sat off to the right, a checkered band on the tail marking each as a member of the 51st Fighter Wing. A pair of black Chevy Suburbans was waiting for them, as was an Air Force colonel, and an aggressively nondescript man in a suit. In the background a knot of airmen waited silently, ready to roll the Blackhawk into a nearby hangar as soon as the brass cleared out.

      Colonel Davis, for his part, was not content. Looking back on the last twenty four hours the encrypted communications he had been receiving contained phrases that rapidly escalated from "telemetry failure" and "premature reentry" to "DPRK territorial waters" and finally "imperative to national security". The Other Governmental Agency had arrived shortly afterward, the civilian intelligence apparatus that followed the military everywhere, if it wasn't there already. In this instance it took the form of Agent Smith of the CIA. Smith was officially there to "advise", whatever that meant, and so far had mostly stood by nodding agreement to things periodically. After hours of peering with hyperspectral eyes and listening with high frequency ears, a reconnaissance drone sent back an image of divers helping hoist a suspicious oblong onto the deck of a trawler under the watchful eyes of a pair of North Korean patrol boats. Finally the question came down from Combined Forces Command: "what is your estimation of the success of a recovery operation?"
      The Air Force, in the person of Davis' CO, suggested that, political considerations aside, destruction of the target as preferable, and recovery as too difficult to be worthwhile in any practical sense. The Navy, in the form of the captain of the USS Shiloh, now lurking somewhere nearby in the Northwestern Pacific, concurred. He wasn't sure what the Central Intelligence Agency suggested, but the next message from Washington informed them all that a recovery operation had been ordered, and that they were all to give their full assistance.
      It was, then, in the spirit of skepticism that he waited while the Globemaster's cargo ramp descended, revealing the plastic wrapped angular nose of a classified low-observability Blackhawk. A young man walked purposely down the center of the ramp, between the rows of cargo rollers. He was tall and well built, but more like a runner or a swimmer than a body builder. His black uniform had no insignia other than low-visibility American flags in black and grey, and no lettering other than a small neat line of Arabic on the chest of his body armor. An assault carbine hung casually from a three point sling across his chest, barrel down. His hair, like his kit, was jet black, and as he strode toward the parked Suburbans he fixed Davis with a pair of icy blue eyes.
      "Colonel Davis? Special Agent Daniel Murphy." His gaze didn't waver as they shook hands. "Your recon photos must have got someone's attention. Seven A-F Command called Combined Forces Command, which in turn called USPACOM, which then called the Joint Chiefs, who called the National Command Authority. The NCA called me."

      Miyuki had decided that, having driven all the way to Berkeley, she ought to spend some quality time wandering among the used books and collected oddities on Telegraph Avenue, and when her phone rang she was standing between a polished brass Ganesh and a black stone Anubis under the benevolent gaze of an airbrushed Bob Marley, in a cloud of powerful Indian incense. Her surroundings later that evening were a stark contrast to the colorful crowded riot of the Berkeley head shop: a small square room in a Chinatown SRO, furnished only with a futon and a mass produced poster icon of the Amida Buddha pinned to the mottled grayish walls. It wasn't what she would have picked, but the owner of the building had made an arrangement with the people who make such arrangements, and this apartment was kept unoccupied for use as a safe house. For all it's other shortcomings, she could base her nocturnal activities from here without being disturbed. An unshaded bulb hung from the ceiling, bathing everything in its sickly white fluorescence.
      It was hellishly hot. The sun had gone down, but over the course of the afternoon it had baked the room through a single, west-facing window, and the old brick building had retained the heat like a giant oven. Miyuki had opened the window right away, but the air outside was still, and as dinnertime came a hundred hot plates and rice cookers added their steam to a general hot dampness that seemed to seep out of the walls, and up from the floorboards.
      At first, Miyuki tried to ignore it. She hadn't thought to buy herself a book when she had the chance, and sat in the center of the floor, legs folded in the lotus position, hands together in the dhyana mudra, trying to meditate. After maybe an hour had passed, she had stripped to her underwear, after maybe two she was sitting perfectly naked under the bare bulb, her clothes folded in a neat pile on the futon, next to the black duffel bag that had been left here for her.
      She closed her eyes and forced herself to concentrate. Mentally she began to build a mandala around herself, small at first, but expanding, a circle within the four walls of her mind, each with its own gate, within another circle in turn, hemmed in by black clouds, the dark chaos of the unenlightened world. By force of will she pushed the walls outward, the circle expanding to push the darkness back, to the corners of the room, and then through the building and finally out across the city; her consciousness expanding outward to form a preternatural awareness of her environment. She envisioned the vajras, the thunderbolts of enlightenment, pushing the leading edge of the mandala outward, and with it she felt the inner strength welling within her, the spiritual will that was first and foremost in the arsenal of the ninja.
      A fly buzzed near the ceiling. Miyuki opened her eyes, and they locked briefly upon those of the cheap icon pinned to the wall. Then, without warning, she sprung straight up from the floor, her lithe, bare body uncoiling like a striking diamondback. She landed like a shadow falling, and brought her hand up before her face; the fly buzzed between her thumb and forefinger, trapped but unharmed. She released it, and sliding back a step, let fly with a straight-armed, open palmed strike, stopping just short of the hovering fly. The force of the displaced air sent the insect into a corner, dazed and indignant, but once again unharmed. Two more punches and an upward kick disturbed the air enough to send the lightbulb swinging back and forth, casting rotating, elastic shadows around the room.
      Miyuki felt exhilarated and eager to move, but she was also sweating quite a bit; it was well after dark but the room hadn't cooled much at all. Like many SRO units, the bathroom was just a toilet and a sink; the showers were a common room somewhere else. She splashed some cold water from the sink on her face, chest and arms; it was a shock, but deliciously cool, as was the tile floor under her bare feet. She stared into the cloudy mirror as she dried herself with a washcloth. The youthful face that stared back wasn't very intimidating, nor were the slim shoulders or graceful neck, and especially not the soft, nude breasts. She stepped lightly back across the main room to the black duffel bag and pulled back the zipper.
      Out, onto the futon came the stab-resistant mesh under armor, the baggy hakama pants, the cropped, sleeveless, turtleneck top. Out came the characteristic two-toed, sound-dampening nightingale tabi, the nomex gloves, and the innocuous strips of fabric that would become puttees, a headband, and a belt. Out came ballistic plastic kneepads, nylon sports pads for the elbows, and a cloth facemask. Out came throwing knives and stars, caltrops, concealable blades and fiendish pyrotechnic devices, garrotes, and a Swiss made automatic pistol with a silencer and spare magazines. Out came the short straight stabbing swords, and finally, from the bottom of the bag, out came the grinning lacquered wood demon mask.