A second enforcer appeared in the doorway, saw what was going on and bellowed in furious Japanese. The thug leapt away from the woman on the floor. He made a nervous bow, a stammered apology. The newcomer stepped in close and backhanded the man three times with shattering force. The thug cowered against the wall. More yelling from the newcomer.

Amidst some of the more colourful insults I’d ever heard in Japanese, he was telling someone to bring clothes for the captive.

By the time Kovacs got back from overseeing the hunt for himself, they had her dressed and seated on a chair in the centre of the cabin’s main living space. Her hands rested in her lap, wrists bound neatly, one over the other with a restraint patch you couldn’t see. The yakuza stood at a careful distance from her, weapons still out. The would-be romantic sulked in a corner, disarmed, one side of his mouth swollen, upper lip split. Kovacs’ eyes flickered over the damage and he turned to the enforcer at his side. A muttered exchange the microcams were not amped to pick up. He nodded, looked again at the woman before him. I read a curious hesitation in his stance.

Then he turned back to the cabin door.

“Anton, you want to come in here?”

The Skull Gang command head stepped into the room. When the woman saw him, her mouth twisted.

“You fucking sellout piece of shit.”

Anton’s lip curled, but he said nothing.

“You know each other, I believe.” But there was a faint question in Kovacs’ voice and he was still watching the woman before him.

Sylvie tipped her gaze at him. “Yeah, I know this asshole. And? Got something to do with you, has it, fuckhead?”

He stared at her, and I tensed in my chair. This segment was first time through for me, and I didn’t know what he’d do. What would I have done at that age? No, scratch that. What was I about to do at that age? My mind fled back through the silted-up decades of violence and rage, trying to anticipate.

But he only smiled.

“No, Mistress Oshima. It has nothing to do with me any more. You are a package I have to deliver in good condition, that’s all.”

Someone muttered, someone else guffawed. Still cranked tight, my neurachem hearing caught a crude joke about packages. In the coil, my younger self paused. His eyes flickered to the man with the broken lip.

“You. Come here.”

The enforcer didn’t want to. You could see it in his stance. But he was yakuza, and in the end it’s all face with them. He straightened up, met Kovacs’ eyes and stepped forward with a filed-tooth sneer. Kovacs looked back at him neutrally and nodded.

“Show me your right hand.”

The yakuza tipped his head to one side, gaze still locked on Kovacs’ eyes. It was a gesture of pure insolence. He flipped up his hand, extended fingers making it a loosely bent blade. He inclined his head again, the other way, still staring deep into this tani piece of shit’s eyes.

Kovacs moved like whiplash on a broken trawler cable.

He snatched the offered hand at the wrist and twisted downward, blocking the other man’s response options with his body. He held the captured arm straight out and his other hand arced over the wrestling lock of both bodies, blaster pointed. A beam flared and sizzled.

The enforcer shrieked as his hand went up in flames. The blaster must have been powered down—most beam weapons will take a limb clean off, vaporised across the width of the blast. This one had only burnt away skin and flesh to the bone and tendon. Kovacs held the man a moment longer, then turned him loose with an elbow-strike cuff across the side of the head. The enforcer collapsed across the floor with his scorched hand clamped under his armpit and his trousers visibly stained. He was weeping uncontrollably.

Kovacs mastered his breathing and looked around the room. Stony faces stared back. Sylvie had turned hers away. I could almost smell the stench of cooked flesh.

“Unless she attempts to escape, you do not touch her, you do not speak to her. Any of you. Is that clear? In this scheme of things, you matter less than the dirt under my fingernails. Until we get back to Millsport, this woman is a god to you. Is that clear?”

Silence. The yakuza captain bellowed in Japanese. Muttered assent crept out in the wake of the dressing down. Kovacs nodded and turned to Sylvie.

“Mistress Oshima. If you’d like to follow me, please.”

She stared at him for a moment, then got to her feet and followed him out of the cabin. The yakuza filed after them, leaving their captain and the man on the floor. The captain stared at his injured enforcer for a moment, then booted him savagely in the ribs, spat on him and stalked out.

Outside, they’d loaded the three men I’d killed in the eyrie onto a fold down grav stretcher rack. The yakuza captain detailed a man to drive it, then took point ahead of a protective phalanx around Kovacs and Sylvie.

Beside and behind the stretcher rack, Anton and the four remaining members of the Skull Gang formed up into a lax rearguard. Dig’s outdoor microcams followed the little procession out of sight along the path down to Tekitomura.

Stumbling fifty metres behind them all, still nursing his ruined and as yet untreated hand, came the disgraced enforcer who had dared to touch Sylvie Oshima.

I watched him go, trying to make sense of it.

Trying to make it fit.

I was still trying when Dig 301 asked if I was finished, if wanted to see something else. I told her no, absently. In my head, Envoy intuition was already doing what needed to be done.

Setting fire to my preconceptions and burning them to the ground.

NINETEEN

The lights were all out in Belacotton Kohei Nine Point Twenty-Six when I got there, but in a unit half a dozen bays down on the right, the upper level windows glowed fitfully, as if the place was on fire inside. There was a frenetic hybrid Reef Dive/Neojunk rhythm blasting out into the night, even through the cranked down loading bay shutter, and three thickset figures stood around outside in dark coats, breathing steam and flapping their arms against the cold. Plex Kohei might have the floorspace to throw big dance parties, but it didn’t look as if he could afford machine security on the door. This was going to be easier than I’d expected.

Always assuming Plex was actually there.

Are you kidding me? Isa’s fifteen-year-old Millsport-accented scorn down the line when I phoned her late that afternoon. Of course he’ll be in. What day is it?

Uh. I estimated. Friday?

Right, Friday. So what do the local yokels do up there on a Friday?

Fuck should I know, Isa? And don’t be such a metrosnob.

Uh, Friday? Hello? Fishing community? Ebisu night?

He’s having a party.

He’s cranking some credit out of cheap floorspace and good take connections, is what he’s doing, she drawled. All those warehouses. All those family friends in the yak.

Don’t suppose you’d know which warehouse exactly.

Stupid question. Picking my way through the fractal street-planning of the warehouse district hadn’t been my idea of fun, but once I hit Belacotton Kohei section, it hadn’t been hard to find my way to the party—you could hear the music across half a dozen alleys in every direction.

Don’t suppose I would. Isa yawned down the line. I guessed she’d not been out of bed that long. Say, Kovacs. You been pissing people off up there?

No. Why?

Yeah, well, I probably shouldn’t really be telling you this for nothing. But seeing as how we go back.

I stifled a grin. Isa and I went back all of a year and a half. When you’re fifteen I guess that’s a long time.

Yeah?

Yeah, been a lot of big heat down here, asking after you. Paying big for answers, too. So if you’re not already, I’d start looking over the shoulder of that deep-voiced new sleeve you’ve got yourself there.