CHAPTER 41

Nox came back on a Thursday.

He walked into the flat without knocking and sat down on the mark he always sat on. One bag. No expression. A new C-rank licence that he dropped on the kitchen table without comment.

Lisa picked it up. The certification stamp was from the Association’s Tokyo office. The examiner’s note read: Candidate demonstrates proficiency substantially above current rank. Full technique declined for demonstration. Adequate for C-rank.

“You declined to show them your full technique.”

“It wasn’t relevant to a C-rank exam.”

Lisa turned the licence over. The photo was blank-faced, standard issue. “You’re impossible.”

“I’m consistent.”

He looked around the flat. The folder was on the table, the shipping codes and the evidence, the name at the bottom of the last page.

“You’ve been busy,” he said.

“We had help.” Lisa slid the folder toward him. “A thief. Sixteen. Archer. She was stealing items from a list someone gave her. One of the items had a dead man’s notes hidden in the binding. Evidence of an illegal supply chain moving gate materials through civilian ports. It connects to Doyle’s cold case. The Chilterns. The tundra. All of it.”

Nox opened the folder. He read the first page. Then the second. His reading pace slowed. “International. These prefixes are Japanese customs. I’ve seen them before.”

“When.”

“A terminal at the Tokyo office, during certification processing. Eleven flags on Yokohama freight across two years, every one cleared with the same two words.”

“I assumed it was a lazy clerk. I assumed it was unrelated.”

“It isn’t unrelated,” Lisa said. “It’s one network operating across a minimum of two countries, moving gate materials through civilian ports, and I’d wager the true figure is considerably higher.”

“Then it’s global rather than domestic.”

“There’s a tournament,” I said. “The World Hunter Games. Morgana, the woman who gave Robin the list, told her everything the dead man found has been building toward this cycle of it. Whatever they’re shipping, it’s all been feeding the same event.”

Nox was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was flat, but the pause before it wasn’t.

“My brother Jun competes for Yokai Guild. They’re one of Japan’s strongest Games contenders. He’s been training for the centennial since before I left.”

“You never mentioned a brother.”

“You never asked.” He closed the folder. “I went to Japan for the Scarlet Death. Jun is what I found instead. But part of it. He knows something about the Yokohama codes. He won’t tell me what.”

“The same people who killed the dead man.”

“Or people connected to them. I don’t know who. I only know Jun is afraid of something, and Jun doesn’t get afraid.”

Lisa looked at the folder. At the shipping codes circling the northern port in Vaughn’s red ink.

“If the network runs through Japan, that’s two fronts. We need to talk to Vaughn. And eventually, we need to talk to your brother.”

“Eventually,” Nox said. “Not yet. He’s not ready. And neither am I.”

He didn’t elaborate. His hand went to his jacket pocket and stayed there a moment longer than it needed to. Whatever was in that pocket, it wasn’t for us yet.

But the mention of Jun was new. Nox didn’t volunteer family information. The fact that he had meant the Japan trip had shaken something loose that he hadn’t finished processing.

He found something.

Something connected to his brother. And to the tournament.

“I know.”

A supply chain does not point at a sporting event for no reason. There is a why sitting underneath all of this, and I cannot see its face yet.

Neither could I. I put it beside every other question the last three days had stacked up, and let it stay a question.

“Vaughn,” I said. “We’re meeting her at ten. Marylebone. Same café where the dead man was supposed to meet her two years ago.”

“Internal Oversight,” Nox said. “The one who wanted the exact words. I liked her. I still don’t like that I did.”

Nox nodded once and stood. He didn’t unpack his bag. He wasn’t staying long enough to need to.

He stopped in the kitchen doorway on his way past, which he didn’t usually do.

“There’s something I should tell you before Vaughn,” he said. “It isn’t about the codes.”

“Go on.”

He didn’t. He filled a glass instead, drank half of it, and stood with his back to me long enough that I stopped waiting for it.

Then he set the glass down and turned round, and pushed his hair back off his face with one hand, and left it there.

I’d known him five months. I had never once seen the whole of his face at the same time.

The scars started at the left temple and ran down past the jaw, four of them, parallel and old and far too clean to have come from anything that had ever had claws. They had been made deliberately, by somebody who had time.

“Eight years old,” Nox said. “My grandfather did it.”

“Why.”

“So I’d stop flinching.” No weight on it at all. “It worked. That was the point. He isn’t a cruel man, and I want that said before you decide anything about him, because you’ll meet him eventually and you’ll want to hit him.”

“I might.”

“You will.” Something moved at the corner of his mouth. “I’d rather you didn’t. He’s eighty-one.”

He let his hair fall back and it covered them again. The whole thing had taken about fifteen seconds.

“Why now?”

“Because I’m going back, and the next time you see me I may have more of them.” He picked up his bag. “And because you’ve never once asked, in five months, and I’ve decided that’s worse than being asked.”

He was at the door before I found anything to say.

“Nox.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for showing me.”

He stood with his hand on the frame and didn’t turn round, for slightly longer than the sentence needed.

“It’s only a face,” he said, and left.

It is not.

“No.”

He has shown that to two people alive, and I would wager money the other one is dead. A pause. You may wish to consider what he believes he has just done, since he plainly did not consider it himself.

✦ ✦ ✦

Vaughn was seated when we arrived, the same charcoal Association coat we’d last seen crossing a lobby, the same clearance badge tucked inside the lapel where you’d only find it if she wanted you to.

“You three,” she said, and something that wasn’t quite a smile crossed her face. “I did wonder whose report that was going to turn out to be.”

“You told us to write it down right,” Lisa said. “And to mark it for your eyes only.”

“I’d like the record to show I’ve never once given better advice.”

“You’re the ones who found Aldridge’s notes. I’ve been waiting two years for someone to bring me those pages.” She didn’t offer her hand. The arrangement was already made.

“The codes you recovered. GM-14 through 16. They’re not just gate materials. They’re gate components. Pre-fabricated. Designed to be assembled on-site. Someone’s been manufacturing gates and shipping them through channels the Association doesn’t monitor.”

“They’re manufacturing gates,” Lisa said. “Not discovering them. Manufacturing them.”

“Building them. And the scale is larger than one country. I’ve traced the same codes through ports in Japan, Russia, and the United States. The network is global. And every shipment for the past five years has been routed toward the same destination.”

“The World Hunter Games.”

Vaughn looked at me. “Morgana told you.”

“Robin told us. She said Morgana’s been tracking this since before Robin was born.”

“Morgana’s been tracking this since before most of the people running it were born.” Vaughn opened a folder of her own. Inside was a map. Northern port. Red circle. Docking schedule.

“This is the next shipment. Three days from now. Small facility. Minimal Association oversight. It’s the last one before the centennial qualifying cycle begins. If we intercept it, we can trace the supply chain back to whoever’s been manufacturing the components.”

“We,” Lisa said.

“I’ve been chasing this for two years. You found the evidence I couldn’t. I’m not letting you walk into a port full of armed contractors without someone who knows the layout.”

She folded the map. “Doyle’s approved the joint operation. Zarya, my network, and whatever local support we can field. We move in three days.”

She stood and left a card on the table. Heavy stock. Same weight as Quill’s. Different name.

“One more thing, since you’ll hear the name eventually and I’d rather you heard it here. The American ports are being watched from the American side, and not by us, and not officially.”

“By who.”

“A private interest with money and a reason. That’s as much as I’ve.” She shouldered her bag.

“What I do have is that the guild sitting closest to it fields Albert Percival. Youngest hunter ever to make A-rank, British-born, naturalised at nineteen, and the reason half this country still can’t say the words brain drain without spitting.”

“He’s involved?”

“He’s adjacent, which in this business is a coin still in the air.” She looked at me for the first time since sitting down.

“If this network runs where I think it runs, you’ll meet him or his people before it’s finished. I’d rather that happened with you knowing who he’s.”

She walked out before I could ask the next question.

Lisa picked up the card, and the map and the shipping schedule with it. “Three days. A port in the north. Armed contractors. Gate components being assembled inside civilian shipping lanes.”

“That’s not a recovery operation,” I said. “And that’s a name I’d rather not have been given today.”

“No. That’s the start of something a lot bigger.” She pocketed the card. “And we’ve got three days to get ready for it.”

Nox, who had been silent through the entire meeting, finally spoke. “Jun’s guild has a training camp in Hokkaido. He invited me. Before I left. I declined.” He looked at the map. “I think I need to accept.”

“For how long.”

“Until I know what he knows. About the codes, and whoever’s been watching him.” He met my eyes.

“I’ll be back before the port raid. But after that, I may need to go again. Japan isn’t finished with me yet.”

He left it there, and the rest of it was already on the table. The pocket, and the brother, and a technique he’d declined to show an examiner.

Nox had found something in Japan that was bigger than whatever he’d told us he went for. He wasn’t ready to say what. But the fact that he’d mentioned Jun at all meant he was getting closer.

“Go,” I said. “We’ll handle the port.”

Nox nodded once. The same nod he gave at the end of every briefing. Then he picked up his bag, which he’d never unpacked, and walked out the door.

Three days, and a port in the north waiting at the end of them. A conspiracy that had started with a dead man’s notes in a book binding and was now global, centennial, and closing fast.

This is more interesting than a C-rank exam.

“Everything’s more interesting than a C-rank exam.”

I am trying to pay you a compliment. For once.

“I noticed.”

Good. Do not get used to it.