“You’re just going to let it all go? Segesvar sells you out, he gets to walk away? Your friends from the beach get to die? Come on, Tak.”

I shook my head. “I’m tired of fighting other people’s battles for them. Brasil and friends got themselves into this, they can get themselves out. And Segesvar will keep. I’ll get to him later.”

“And Vidaura?”

“What about her?”

“She trained us, Tak.”

“Yeah, us. Get on and save her yourself.”

If you weren’t an Envoy, you would have missed it. It was less than a flicker, some millimetric shift in stance, maybe not even that. But Murakami slumped.

“I can’t do it on my own,” he said quietly. “I don’t know the inside of Segesvar’s place, and without that I’d need an Envoy platoon to take it.”

“Then call in the Corps.”

“You know what that would do to—”

“Then tell me who your flicking source is.”

“Yeah,” said Jad sardonically, in the quiet that followed. “Or just ask him to come in from next door.”

She caught my eye and nodded at a closed drop-hatch in the back of the tower room. I took a step towards it and Murakami could barely hold himself back from the blocking move he wanted to make. He glared at Jad.

“Sorry,” she said, and tapped her head with a forefinger. “Dataflow alert. Pretty standard wincefish hardware. Your friend in there is using a phone, and he’s moving about a lot. Pacing nervously would be my guess.”

I grinned at Murakami. “Well, Tod. Your call.”

The tension lasted a couple of seconds more, then he sighed and gestured me forward.

“Go ahead. You would have worked it out sooner or later anyway.”

I went to the drop-hatch, found the panel and thumbed it. The machinery grumbled to itself somewhere deep in the building. The hatch cranked upward in juddery, hesitant increments. I leaned into the space it left.

“Good evening. So which one of you’s the snitch?”

Four faces turned towards me, and as soon as I saw them, four severely dressed figures in black, the pieces thumped into place in my head like the sound of the drop-hatch reaching the end of its recess. Three were muscle, two men and and a woman and the skin on their faces all had a shiny plastic elasticity where their facial tattooing had been sprayed over. It was a short-term, daily option that wouldn’t stand much professional scrutiny.

But deep as they were into haiduci turf, it probably would save them from having to fight pitched battles on every Newpest street corner.

The fourth, the one holding the phone, was older but unmistakable by demeanour alone. I nodded my understanding.

“Tanaseda, I presume. Well, well.”

He bowed slightly. It went with the package, the same groomed, old school manners and look. He wore no facial skin decoration because at the levels he’d attained, he would be a frequent visitor in First Family enclaves that would frown on it. But you could still see the honour scars where they had been removed without benefit of modern surgical technique. His grey streaked black hair was bound back tightly in a short ponytail, the better to reveal the scarring across the forehead and accentuate the long bones of the face. The eyes beneath the brow were brown and hard like polished stones. The careful smile he gave me was the same one he would bestow upon death if and when it came for him.

“Kovacs-san.”

“So what’s your end of this, sam?” The muscle bristled collectively at my disrespect. I ignored it, glanced back at Murakami instead. “I take it you know he wants me Really Dead, as slowly and unpleasantly as possible.”

Murakami locked gazes with the yakuza senior.

“That can be resolved,” he murmured. “Is this not so, Tanaseda-san?”

Tanaseda bowed again. “It has come to my notice that though you were involved in the death of Hirayasu Yukio, you were not wholly to blame.”

“So?” I shrugged to displace the rising anger, because the only way he could have heard that little snippet was through virtual interrogation of Orr or Kiyoka or Lazlo, after my younger self helped him kill them.

“Doesn’t usually cut much ice with you people, who’s really to blame or not.”

The woman in his entourage made a tiny growling sound deep in her throat. Tanaseda cut it with a tiny motion of his hand at his side, but the gaze he bent on me belied the calm in his tone.

“It has also become clear to me that you are in possession of Hirayasu Yukio’s cortical storage device.”

“Ah.”

“Is this so?”

“Well, if you think I’m going to let you search me for it, you can—”

“Tak.” Murakami’s voice came out lazy, but it wasn’t. “Behave. Do you have Hirayasu’s stack or not?”

I paused on the hinge of the moment, more than half of me hoping they might try to strongarm it. The man on Tanaseda’s left twitched and I smiled at him. But they were too well-trained.

“Not on me,” I said.

“But you could deliver it to Tanaseda-san, could you not?”

“If I had any incentive to, I suppose I could, yes.”

The soft-throated snarl again, back and forth among all three of the yakuza muscle this time.

“Ronin,” one of them spat.

I met his eye. “That’s right, sam. Masterless. So watch your step. There’s no one to call me to heel if I take a dislike to you.”

“Nor anyone to back you up when you find yourself in a corner,” observed Tanaseda. “May we please dispense with this childishness, Kovacs-san? You speak of incentives. Without the information I have supplied, you would now be captive with your colleagues, awaiting execution. And I have offered to revoke my own writ for your elimination. Is this not enough for the return of a cortical stack you have in any case no use for?”

I smiled. “You’re full of shit, Tanaseda. You’re not doing this for Hirayasu. He’s a fucking waste of good sea air, and you know it.”

The yakuza master seemed to coil tighter into himself as he stared at me. I still wasn’t sure why I was pushing him, what I was pushing for.

“Hirayasu Yukio is my brother-in-law’s only son.” Very quietly, barely a murmur across the space between us, but edged with contained fury.

“There is giri here that I would not expect a southerner to understand.”

“Motherfucker,” said Jad wonderingly.

“Ah, what do you expect, Jad?” I made a noise in my throat. “In the end, he’s a criminal, no different than the fucking haiduci. Just a different mythology and the same crabshit delusions of ancient honour.”

“Tak—”

“Back off, Tod. Let’s get this out in the open where it belongs. This is politics, and nothing even remotely cleaner. Tanaseda here isn’t worried about his nephew once removed. That’s just a side bonus. He’s worried he’s losing his grip, he’s afraid of being punished for a fucked-up blackmail attempt. He’s watching Segesvar get ready to make friends with Aiura Harlan, and he’s terrified the haiduci are going to get cut in on some serious global action in return for their trouble. All of which his Millsport cousins are likely to lay pretty directly at his front door, along with a short sword and a set of instructions that read insert here and slice sideways. Right, Tan?”

The muscle on the left lost it, as I suspected he might. A needle-thin blade dropped from his sleeve into his right hand. Tanaseda snapped something at him and he froze. His eyes blazed at me and his knuckles whitened around the hilt of the knife.

“See,” I told him. “Masterless samurai don’t have this problem. There’s no leash. If you’re ronin, you don’t have to watch honour sold out for political expediency.”

“Tak, will you just fucking shut up,” groaned Murakami.

Tanaseda stepped past the taut, rippling tension on the furious bodyguard.

He watched me through narrowed eyes, as if I was some kind of poisonous insect he needed to examine more closely.

“Tell me, Kovacs-san,” he said quietly. “Is it your wish to die at the hands of my organisation after all? Are you looking for death?”