There was no reply.

By that time the Dragon was too close for Annja to take a chance with another message. She’d just have to hope that he’d heard.

It wasn’t an auspicious beginning.

The Dragon stopped about ten feet away from Annja and the two women looked each other over. Gone was the slightly over-the-top fan from the other day. Annja could see that in her place was a stone-cold killer with dead-flat eyes. She was dressed in loosely fitting dark clothing that Annja knew had been chosen not just to allow for ease of movement but also to hide her amid the shadows that were settling all around them now. The hilt of a sword rose up over the edge of one shoulder.

“Where’s Roux?” Annja asked, leaning to the side to look past the Dragon, as if he might be waiting back there in the darkness from which she had emerged.

Shizu laughed. “He’s here. You’ll be reunited with him in a moment. Where’s the sword?”

Knowing that only one of them was going to make it out of this encounter alive, Annja didn’t care about the Dragon seeing the truth and so she reached into the otherwhere and drew forth the sword.

One moment her hand was empty and the next it was filled with the hilt of an ancient broadsword, the tip of the blade pointed directly at the Dragon’s throat.

Shizu’s face showed surprise, though it was masked very quickly.

Annja had seen it, though, and she wondered about it. Did the Dragon’s sword operate differently? Is that why she wore it openly on her back rather than letting it rest in the otherwhere? Or was it all just a trick to throw her off the track, to lull her into making a mistake?

The Dragon made a strange flicking motion with her hand and suddenly there was a pistol in it. She pointed it at Annja.

“Put the sword down on the ground.”

Annja stood resolute. “No, not until I know where Roux is.”

“I told you, he’s nearby. You’ll see him soon enough.” The pistol rose slightly, until the barrel was level with her face. “It would be a shame to mess up those pretty features,” Shizu said.

Annja clicked her tongue twice, one of the pre-arranged signals she and Henshaw had come up with for when they were in the thick of things. This particular one meant that he was to put a warning shot right across her bow, to show the Dragon that she wasn’t the only one with arms and support.

Nothing happened.

She did it again.

Click, click.

Still nothing.

Apparently she was on her own.

Annja suddenly felt very inadequate for the situation she faced.

The Dragon chambered a round into the barrel of the pistol. “I said, put the sword down.”

Not seeing any other alternative, Annja did as she was told.

As she prepared for the sword to leave her hand she had a momentary flash of panic. She didn’t know what it was that made the sword bond to her in the first place, nor did she know what it took for it to remain in this world. She had always assumed that it would stay in her possession until she died, but here she was voluntarily relinquishing it to another. Would the sword pass on to its new owner as a result? Would it abandon her in the mistaken belief that she was abandoning it?

Easy, Annja, she told herself. The sword will understand. Have faith.

At this point, that was all she had left—faith.

She put the sword on the ground and willed it to remain and not vanish into the otherwhere.

“Now, move over there,” the Dragon said, pointing with the barrel of the gun to where a screen in the side of the pavilion had been pulled back, revealing a small balcony overlooking the lake.

Slowly Annja did as she was told. She never took her gaze off the Dragon. If this was going to be it, she wanted to meet death with her eyes open and spit into the face of her adversary. While she watched her enemy, she also continued concentrating on keeping the sword in the here and now; having it disappear into the otherwhere would probably earn her a bullet in the head.

The Dragon kept her distance as she circled toward where the sword rested on the ground. By the time Annja reached the balcony, the Dragon was standing over the sword. She bent over, slid it into a cloth sheath that she’d produced from somewhere on her person and slung the entire package over her back, next to her own weapon.

“We had a deal,” Annja said. “The sword for Roux.”

For a moment Annja thought the Dragon was just going to run off, but then she realized the woman was enjoying this. Whatever was about to happen, it would probably not be pleasant for Roux or Annja.

“Look to your left,” Shizu said. “Do you see the line tied to the railing?”

Annja looked that way and then quickly back again. “Yes, I see it.” It was a narrow piece of fishing line, nearly invisible in the fading sunlight, tied off at the railing and disappearing out into the pond.

“Untie it and pull on it,” the Dragon said.

Annja eyed her warily but made no move toward the line.

The gun swiveled in her direction again. “I said, pull on it.”

Annja didn’t see that she had a choice, so she stepped closer and began to work at the knot. While she did so, she tried reaching out to Henshaw again.

“Are you out there?” she whispered.

She heard nothing but static.

When the line was finally untied, she gave it a good yank. Behind her, out on the water, something splashed.

“Reel it in,” Shizu ordered.

Again, Annja did as she was told, but this time a cold sense of foreboding was stealing across her body. Something had gone very wrong; it seemed likely that both Henshaw and Roux were already dead, which left her alone to escape the Dragon’s clutches.

It only took a few seconds to reel in the line and when she did she discovered that it was attached to a long hollow reed that resembled nothing so much as a wet piece of narrow bamboo. As she stared at it, something began to churn and splash at the base of the floating Torii marker in the middle of the lake.

“I promised I’d deliver Roux alive and unharmed,” the Dragon said, with a vicious smile. “I always keep my promises. It’s just too bad that you’re the one who just took his air hose out of his mouth. Old guy like that, he probably won’t last two minutes.”

As Annja made the connection between the long narrow reed in her hand and the churning commotion in the middle of the pond, her mind screamed at her to act before it was too late.

She backed up, took three running steps and dove over the railing into the lake, all thought of the Dragon forgotten. She struck the water in a shallow dive and let her momentum carry her along as far as it could before she surfaced and swam toward the floating torii with hard strokes of her arms and legs. The cold water sucked the heat from her limbs and her wet clothing threatened to drag her down, but she knew she had only minutes to save Roux from drowning so she fought her way forward.

Behind her, unnoticed by all but the gun-toting watcher on the ridge above, the Dragon walked briskly out of the pavilion.

As she drew closer to the floating signpost, Annja ducked below the surface. The torii wasn’t actually floating, she discovered, but was held in place by a long shaft that was sunk several feet into the muck-covered bottom of the pond.

Roux was tied to that shaft.

He was flailing, trying desperately to get himself free. Air bubbles streamed away from him as he fought to hold his breath and his eyes were wide with the sense of impending death. Annja couldn’t even be sure if he saw her, nor did she have time to find out.

She surfaced, grabbed another lungful of air and then shot back down to help Roux.

Up close she discovered she’d been wrong; Roux wasn’t tied to the shaft.

He was chained.

A shiny steel chain was attached to the pole and then wrapped around his body several times, securing him in place. It was all held together by a thick, brass lock.