He stood in the silence of Chrysalis's bedroom, studiously not thinking about his past. Long minutes passed and he suddenly realized that Chrysalis should have returned.
He frowned. It was almost inconceivable that something could happen to Chrysalis in the Crystal Palace, but the habitual caution that had saved Brennan's life more times than he cared to remember made him assemble his bow before going after her. He would feel foolish if he bumped into her in the dark, but he had 'felt foolish before. It was preferable to feeling dead, a sensation he was more intimately acquainted with than he liked.
Chrysalis wasn't in the corridors of the third floor, nor on the stairway leading down to the taproom, but he heard murmuring voices as he crept down the stairs.
He drew an arrow, placed it on the string of his bow, and peered around the edge of the stairwell where it opened up into the back of the taproom. He gritted his teeth. He had been right to be cautious.
Chrysalis was standing before the long, polished-wood bar that ran almost the entire length of the taproom. The whiskey decanter, still empty, was forgotten on the bar next to her. Her arms were crossed and her jaw was clenched. Her lips were compressed in a thin, angry line.
Two men bracketed her and a third sat facing her at a table in front of the bar. Brennan coud discern few details in the dimness of the night-light that burned above the bar, but the men all had hard, tough faces. The one facing her drummed his fingers on the tabletop next to a chrome-plated pistol.
"Come on," he said in a soft but dangerous-sounding voice. "We just want some information. That's all. We won't even say where we got it." He leaned back in his chair. "Soon there's going to be war, but we don't know who to hit."
"And you think I do?" Brennan recognized the edge anger put in Chrysalis's drawl, but he also recognized the fear under the anger.
The seated man smiled. "We know you do, babe. You know everything about this Jokertown shithole. All we know is that someone has put together these nickel-and-dime gangs into something called the Shadow Fists. They're moving into our territory, taking our customers, and cutting into our profits. It's got to stop."
"If I knew a name," Chrysalis said, coming down hard on the if, "it would cost you more than you can pay to learn it." The man sitting at his table shook his head. "You don't understand," he said. "This is war, babe. And it's going to cost you more than you can pay to keep your mouth shut." He let his words sink in while he drummed his fingers on the tabletop. "Sal," he said after a moment, nodding at the man who stood to Chrysalis's right. " I wonder if her famous invisible skin would scar?"
Sal considered the question. "Let's see," he finally said. There was a loud snick and Brennan saw light glint off a shiny blade. Sal waved it in Chrysalis's face, and she shrank back against the bar. She opened her mouth to scream, but the man standing on her left clamped his gloved hand over it. Sal laughed and Brennan stood and loosed the arrow he'd been holding. It struck Sal in the back and catapulted him over the bar. No one had any idea what had happened, except possibly Chrysalis. The man seated at the table snatched his pistol and leaped to his feet. Brennan calmly shot him through the throat. The thug holding Chrysalis let out a startled stream of obscenities and fumbled under his jacket for a pistol that he carried in a shoulder rig. Brennan shot him through the right forearm. He dropped his gun and spun away from Chrysalis, staring at the aluminum-shafted hunting arrow skewering his arm and mumbling, "Jesus, oh, Jesus." He stooped to pick up his pistol.
"Touch it," Brennan called from the darkness, "and I'll put the next arrow through your right eye."
The thug wisely stood up and backed against the bar. He clutched his bleeding arm and moaned.
Brennan stepped forward into the diffuse light cast by the nightlamp burning over the bar. The man stared at the razor-tipped arrow nocked to his bowstring.
"Who are they?" Brennan asked Chrysalis in a harsh, clipped voice.
"Mafia," she replied, her voice cracking with tension and fear.
Brennan nodded, never taking his eyes off the thug who stared at the arrow that was pointed at his throat.
"Do you know who I am?"
The mafioso nodded violently. "Ya. You're that Yeoman guy-the bow 'n' arrow killer. I read about you alla time in the Post." The words tripped out of his mouth in a fear-filled torrent.
"That's right," Brennan said. He spared the man who'd been sitting at the table a quick glance and saw that he was curled on the floor in a widening pool of blood, a foot of arrow sticking out from the nape of his neck. He didn't bother checking Sal. He'd had a clean heart shot on him.
"You're a lucky man," Brennan continued in his same dead voice. "Know why?"
The mafioso bobbed his head vigorously side to side, sighing in relief when Brennan relaxed the tension on the taut bowstring and set the bow aside.
"Someone has to deliver a message for me. Someone has to tell your boss that Chrysalis is off bounds. Someone has to tell him that I have an arrow with his name on it, an arrow I would not be slow in delivering if I heard that something had happened to Chrysalis. Do you think you could tell him that?"
"Sure. Sure I could."
"Good." Brennan reached into his back pocket and showed the thug a playing card, a black ace of spades. "This is so he knows you're telling the truth."
He grabbed the man's wounded arm by the elbow and yanked it straight. The thug groaned as Brennan stuck the card on the arrowtip.
"And this," Brennan said through gritted teeth, "is to make sure you don't loose it."
With a sudden, forceful jerk he impaled the man's other arm on the arrowpoint. The mafioso screamed at the sharp, unexpected pain. He sagged to his knees as Brennan bent the aluminum shaft of the arrow under and around both of his arms, pinning them together as tightly as handcuffs would. Brennan yanked him to his feet. The man was sobbing in fear and pain and couldn't look Brennan in the eye.
"If I ever see you again," Brennan said, "you'll die." The thug staggered away, sobbing and gibbering incomprehensible protestations. Brennan watched him until he tottered through the front door, then turned to Chrysalis. She was looking at him with fear in her eyes, more than some of which, he was sure, was directed toward him. "Are you all right?" he asked softly.
"Yes… yes, I think so… "
"You'll have to answer a lot of questions," Brennan said, "unless we get rid of the bodies."
"Yes."; She nodded sharply, suddenly decisive, suddenly in control again. "I'll call Elmo. He'll handle it." She looked him straight in the eye. "I owe you."
Brennan sighed. "Does your entire life have to consist of rigidly tabulated credits and debits?"
She looked at little startled, but nodded. "Yes," she said firmly. "Yes, it does. It's the only way to keep track, to make sure…" Her voice trailed away, and she turned and went around the bar. She looked down at Sal's body, and when she spoke again, she voiced a totally different thought. "You know, Tachyon invited me to go on that world tour of his. I think I'll take him up on it. No telling what information I'll pick up rubbing elbows with all those politicians. And if there's going to be street warfare between the Mafia and Kien's Shadow Fists,"-she looked into Brennan's eyes for the first time-"I would be safer elsewhere."
They looked at each other for a long moment, and then Brennan nodded.
"I'd better be going, then."
"Your whiskey?"
Brennan let out a long sigh. "No." He looked at the body at his feet. "Drink brings memories, and I don't need any tonight." He looked back at her. "I'm going to be… indisposed… for the next few weeks. I probably won't see you before you leave. Good-bye, Chrysalis."
She watched him go, a crystalline tear glistening on her invisible cheek, but he never looked back, he never saw.
II
The Twisted Dragon was located somewhere within the nebulous boundary of an interlocking Jokertown and Chinatown. One of Brennan's street sources had told him that the bar was the hangout of Danny Mao, a man who had a moderately high position in the Shadow Fist Society and was said to be in charge of recruitment.