Until all contact with the world except the air in the lungs was severed. Only then could one see the Hidden Face and, joining it in death, know everything.
Shiro yearned to see the Hidden Face at death, but was more than willing to wait before joining it in the Eternal Void. He had just recently passed his twenty-second birthday and was hoping to ascend from acolyte to temple guard.
If so, he intended to spend many years in loyal service at that post. Perhaps in his later years—much later years—he would ascend to the Inner Circles, but for now he wished to preserve all his senses and body parts.
He and Tadasu led their teacher to the storeroom. Along the way they passed one of Shiro's fellow acolytes wheeling a wooden cart holding a masked monk in a blue robe. He had no legs and no eyes. Shiro knew him as the Seer.
When they reached the storeroom, Shiro opened the door and the odor slapped him in the face. The man sprawled on the floor smelled as if he had not bathed since the Tokugawa Shogunate. They had brought him here from his cardboard house under a Brooklyn overpass. Although he had traveled in the trunk of one of the Order's cars, his presence had fouled the air of the passenger area. They had been forced to drive with the windows open.
The man was a bearded Caucasian of indeterminate age, but he was quite content where he was. Shiro and Tadasu had provided him with a large bottle of Jack Daniel's. He had already consumed half of it.
He studied Akechi-sensei with bleary eyes, then grinned, showing rotted teeth.
"Is it Halloween already? I dig the mask." He lifted the bottle in a mock toast. "Trick or treat!"
"We have done well, sensei?"
At least he said "we" this time.
Akechi-sensei nodded as Shiro gratefully closed the door. "He will make a good trial shoten. We want a small Kuroikaze for our test. He will not survive the strain for long."
The Kuroikaze… the Black Wind. Shiro had heard of it since childhood when his father had handed him over to the monks of the Kakureta Kao. But no one alive had actually seen one, so it remained a formless legend. A legend he knew by heart.
In the sixteenth century, the shoguns imprisoned the Emperor in Kyoto while they ruled as they wished. After Nobunaga took control he began killing off all who supported the Emperor. He made a special target of the Order, which had been agitating for restoration of the Imperial Line. According to legend, Susanoo, the Sword God, the direct ancestor of the Emperor, created the Kakureta Kao in the time of Jimmu, the first Emperor, and charged it with the mission of protecting the Son of Heaven, and preserving His power in the world.
Nobunaga's armies marched throughout Honshu, razing each of the Order's monasteries after slaughtering all the monks. Finally, only the oldest, largest, and best fortified monastery—in Nanao on Honshu's west coast—remained. Under siege, the remnants of the Kakureta Kao delved into the cache of ancient lore that was their legacy from the God of Swords, and found a means to defend themselves.
As the shogun's armies neared the gates of the monastery, a darkness descended and a mystical wind rose up around the temple. Some called it The-Wind-That-Bends-Not-the-Trees, some said it was another Kamikaze, or "Divine Wind" like the one that sank Kubla Khan's invading fleet at the end of the thirteenth century. But those in the Order knew it as the Kuroikaze—the "Black Wind." The legends didn't say exactly what happened, but when the Kuroikaze was done, half of the shogunate's army lay dead on the field, with the rest in retreat.
Nobunaga left the Kakureta Kao alone after that.
But the Order never fully recovered. It consolidated into a single temple in Tokyo not far from the Imperial Palace. During the Second World War it once again used the Black Wind against the Emperor's enemies, and might have changed the course of the war had it not made the fatal error of relocating to Hiroshima.
"Tomorrow night we shall test the ekisu. I have found the perfect place, right here on this island, almost within sight of our ultimate target."
Shiro asked, "Why New York City, sensei? Why not Washington?"
Recently he had explored the city in search of the compounds necessary for the ekisu. During his travels he had become enamored of Manhattan—so full of life and motion. He felt energized whenever he set foot there.
"Washington may be the seat of the American government, but New York City is its engine. It is the heart that pumps economic life throughout the rest of the country, and even into the rest of the world. Kill New York City and not only do we drive this foul nation to its economic knees, but we deal a death blow to its spirit."
Shiro was not so sure about that, but who was he to doubt his sensei?
Tadasu said, "Pardon, sensei, but will we truly be able to level Manhattan using such a miserable excuse for a human being as a shoten?"
Shiro saw the skin around Akechi-sensei's eyes crinkle behind his mask holes, a sign he'd come to recognize as a smile. "We once thought the ekisu effective only when used with a child. We have since learned that any living human, no matter how miserable, can serve as a shoten. And as for Manhattan, we shall not level it. The Kuroikaze will do much worse. Tomorrow night you shall see."
From outside, the Fifth Quarter looked pretty much like every other Irish pub Jack had seen. Inside, two steps down from street level, it looked pretty much like every other sports bar he'd seen: oval bar in the center, a ring of wide-screen TVs above it, high pub tables and stools near the bar, regular tables and chairs farther out, booths along the walls. And more TV screens in every corner.
Each and every screen was running the Mets game—they were leading the Phillies four-zip. Jack had been a Phillies fan as a kid. Now it was Go Mets.
"There she is," Bobblehead said, pointing toward the twenty-something teased blonde behind the bar. "Thank God it's her shift."
He hurried ahead of Jack, demonstrating—in case anyone might have forgotten—the origin of his street name.
By the time Jack reached the bar, Suzy had her phone out and was doing a two-thumb tap dance on the keypad.
"I kept somma them," she said in a thick Nassau County accent. "Most was so blurry I ditched them right off."
Bobble glanced ceilingward with a please-please-please look.
"Hope you kept some of me," he said, turning back to Suzy. "My mother wants to see a recent picture, and I think the best kind to send her is one of me having fun with my friends. Hey, y'got one of me and Hughie? He was in rare form Saturday."
Suzy grinned. "Should've been. He picked the winner." More button pressing. "Let's see here. Hey, here's you and Artie."
"Nah. Where's the one with me and Hughie?"
"Here's you with Joey from Ohio."
"You must be one photogenic guy," Jack said. "Everyone wants a picture with you."
"Yeah, I'm a photo ho. Look, Suze—"
"Here's the last one of you—with Laurie this time."
Bobble glanced at it with a disappointed expression, started to look away, then grabbed the phone for a closer look.
"Hey!" Suzy said.
He handed it back. "Sorry. Any way I can get a copy of that?"
"I can send it to your cell phone."