The Lostkind (42 page)

"Go back to the Crucible, and get our people assembled." Yasi directed. "It's time we told Keeper and Archivist what we've been doing with them."

Dorcan took in a shuddering breath as she ducked back in and closed the door.

"Well..." He said to himself. "It's starting."

~oo00oo~

"Hey."

Vincent passed a bowl across the counter and responded to his ex without looking. "Yeah?"

Connie was looking over the tables. "You notice anything strange?"

Vincent looked out over the crowd of homeless, and slowly glanced over at her. "Can you be more specific?"

"No Lostkind." Connie remarked.

Vincent looked, and realized she was right. "When was the last time we didn't have even one of them here?"

Connie shrugged. "Might be new faces. They could be here and we just don't recognize them."

Vincent shook his head. "Doubt it. They don't recruit that many that quickly."

Connie frowned, willing to take his word for it. "You think something happened?"

"Maybe."

"Well, Yasi will tell you tonight if you ask."

Vincent spooned soup into another bowl and didn't answer, but his face turned a shade of red.

Connie grinned, enjoying his reaction just a little. "I got eyes everywhere too." She needled in a spooky tone. "Your ex-girlfriend is always watching."

"Tecca told you." Vincent retorted. "The eight year old kid really thinks the grownups don't know where he's going?"

Connie snorted. "I felt that the kid might be safer indoors at night instead of scurrying through alleys looking for street gangs to spy on."

"Tecca's spying on gangs?"

"Yep. And before you ask, no; it's not his job. It's just something he does for
fun
." Connie scorned. "So yeah, I get him to stay in as often as I can."

Vincent held up his hands, placating her. "Hey, I'm not complaining. But you're right: Yasi and the Watchers do a lot of business with the Homeless. Places like this are golden opportunities to keep an eye on the city… so where the hell
is
everyone tonight?"

~oo00oo~

Dorcan hurried into the Dojo; and froze. The assembled Shinobi were leaving out the opposite door. All the original chambers of the underside had two entrances, in case one corridor caved in. It also made it far easier to sneak in and out of reach without anyone knowing; which was the way the Shinobi usually operated, but not so many at once...

"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Noale whispered.

"You want to stay here and try and reason with Yasi?"

"She's not unreasonable." Noale defended. "She just... Doesn't have real emotions like most people do."

"Noale." Dorcan stepped out of the darkness and caught her by the collar. "Where the hell are you going? We were told to assemble."

The rest of the Shinobi froze at the sight of Yasi's Second. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to say anything first. Finally, Dorcan forced the issue. "Noale, you can go ahead and consider that your cue to start talking."

Noale shrank a little under Dorcan's glare. 'A few weeks ago... Some of us go to thinking, that maybe... Hell, we're not soldiers. We're Urban Runners! We're acrobats with swords! We break up scuffles in the Market and we keep an eye on the River but... Dammit, we're not at war with anybody! Or at least we
shouldn't
be."

Dorcan didn't bother to deny the possibility, but didn't surrender the point. "There's been no Deceleration. We don't even know for sure that anyone wants to start a fight; so there's no reason to worry yet... Is there?" Even as it came out of his mouth he saw the reactions on their faces and his gaze narrowed.
"Is there?"

The sneaking Shinobi glared hard at Noale as though she had a big mouth.

Noale grit her teeth, and kept her chin up. "A few weeks ago, a man called..."

"Owen." Dorcan said it with her. "How do you know he was telling the truth, damn it? It could just be a bluff. How many warriors could come down here without getting noticed? How many would we have waiting? How do you know that he's not playing you? Could be he can't get enough warriors in to beat us, so he just bluffs us into surrender... or running away. How do you know?"

"That's the point Dorcan. We're not fighters. We're spies, and we
don't
know. We know this whole city better than the people living in it do, and we don't know."

"You coward!" Dorcan snapped. "You're the guardians of this place, and have been your whole lives!"

"We're not all Yasi, dammit!" Noale snapped, finally frustrated enough to meet him with equal fire. "We don't all look forward to battle, we're not all so good at it, we're not all tough and cold and brutal as the Captain. She's trying to turn us into her, and we don't want to be. This is too big for us. What's the point of being Lostkind if being invisible doesn't work?"

Dorcan looked at her darkly. "And what happens without you? It's your job to protect these people, this place... Does that mean nothing after all this time?"

Noale looked sick about it. "And when we charge down the guns, protecting this place... Who's protecting us?"

"We protect each other!" Dorcan's face hardened. "Listen. All of you, listen to me. Yasi's the Captain; she's our captain. She says to fight, we fight. She says to wait, we wait. There is a reason for that. We're the ones that look out for this place. Everyone up above is scared of things that lurk in the shadows, but Lostkind aren't. We are the things that lurk in the shadows. Now all of a sudden we're not the only predators in the concrete jungle, and you lot want to run? Like hell. You're better than that. You live here. If our home is in danger, we'll protect it. That's what we do; what we've been trained for. It's what we're
born
for!"

Nobody moved, nobody spoke.

Dorcan growled; disgusted. "If you can't live up to that, then go. You carry the swords of the New York Ninja. You don't want to be ninja, hand them in. But you don't run just because the game got harder. Captain looks out for her own-"

"Like she did when you got thrown in the Oubliette?" Noale shot back. "Captain's not our friend. What do we owe her?"

"Same thing you owe your home." Dorcan said seriously. "If you don't care about the thousands of people who live here as much as you do about your own worthless hides, then go. I can't stop you. It's your call." He stared them all down. "What's it gonna be?"

~oo00oo~

Still in the Round Table Room, Keeper looked sick to her stomach. "Is there any chance at all it was a mistake?" She whispered, horror making her voice raspy.

Yasi shook her head. "No. This is for real."

Archivist looked about a million years old. "It was all they could do to stop the authorities from finding them. There are newspapers all over Europe talking about where the water may have come from."

"He had to know." Yasi thought aloud. "I mean, Vandark
had
to know. Driving them out into Berlin had to be the plan."

"They stopped him." Keeper croaked, still hoarse from pure dismay. "It cost them everything, but they kept the secret. They kept Rule Number One."

"But Vandark tried to break it." Yasi muttered, not really hearing anything. "He wanted to… to
drown
them all."

Archivist shook it off faster than the rest of them. "Yasi. He might come here."

Keeper spun. "Why the hell would Vandark come here?!"

"No, he's right." Yasi said, untouched by the emotions of the room, being cold and smart. "He's always wanted New York. Berlin Below wasn't the target, it was just a stage in his attack on this place. He's spent two years doing recon and prep. We assumed we'd stopped his plans when we got Owen's files. We were wrong. Now that Vandark has pulled the first trigger, he won't hesitate to pull the second." She came to attention. "Keeper, Archivist, I strongly suggest that we tell everyone that this place has been at war for the last six months."

Keeper and Archivist traded an ugly look. They knew she was right, but it would be the first time that the Underside had faced an open threat to the whole. They feared the reaction of a large population of people that were used to being invisible to dangers.

But there was another terror lurking in the conversation, and Keeper was the first to speak it aloud. "We can't take them." She said shortly.

"Wanna bet?" Yasi grinned. The first smile any of them had shown in over an hour. "Come with me."

~oo00oo~

Yasi led the way through the tunnels toward the Shinobi training chambers. She filled them in as they walked, mindful of the omnipresent Lostkind Gremlins.

"Six months ago, after Owen spelled out the whole story, a number of things started making sense." Yasi explained. "After giving the matter a little thought, I figured as long as Vandark was a hunted man in Europe, he wouldn't give up on his plans to come here." She sighed. "And we weren't ready, plain and simple. So I took steps."

"What sort of steps?"

"My Shinobi have never exactly been super-soldiers. It's a Clan, like the Borrowers, or the Diggers... I've been working since we learned of the threat to turn them from Peacekeepers into actual warriors."

"Why didn't you tell us?!" Archivist asked, not for the first time.

"Because it was the only way I could see that we could stand against Vandark; and there was a very small chance you might have said no, so I took care of it myself." She shrugged. "There was no reason to tell you; and the less people that knew about it the better."

Keeper nudged Archivist. "She gets that from you."

Yasi grinned. "You want to go see them in action?"

~oo00oo~

Yasi came into the Shinobi chamber. "Fall IN!" She bellowed as Archivist and Keeper came in behind her.

The Chamber was empty.

Surprised, Yasi looked around and let out a shrill 'Hey Taxi' whistle.

No response.

"Okay." Keeper creaked. "What are we looking at?"

Yasi had a self-deprecating smirk on her face, confusion making her laugh despite herself. "What you're
supposed
to be looking at is over three dozen newly trained and well armed Shinobi."

Keeper hissed a breath through her teeth. "Still can't believe you managed to keep this a secret."

"They were motivated enough. They'll be protecting themselves too." Yasi promised.

"That's more true than you know." A voice came from the other end of the chamber.

The Triumvirate spun at the sound of the voice, and Dorcan emerged from the shadows. "They left." He said, sounding exhausted. "Vandark made the Throwbacks a better offer, and apparently our people too: If they walked away, he wouldn't chase them."

"What?!" Yasi hissed.

"Because they know we can't win." Archivist said instantly. "You said it yourself Yasi, Vandark is a threat we aren't ready for; and even our own warriors know it."

"How many do we have left?" Keeper asked thickly.

"Twenty, maybe thirty..." Dorcan said bitterly. "Our elite warriors just became a non-event."

Yasi said nothing; staring into space for a long time; completely derailed.

"So what do we do?"

Yasi didn't seem to hear her. The Warrior Woman had gone blank, lost for the first time.

"Vandark made them a better offer?" Archivist repeated. "He didn't get in. So how did he find out about your little secret army?"

"I don't know." Dorcan said honestly. "Yasi?"

Yasi shook off her dark thoughts finally. "This is going to be a very tough little war." Yasi said at last. Her voice was hollow with barely contained horror. "I don't..." She looked to Dorcan, who met her eyes with steely calm. Yasi felt her posture straighten automatically. She could break down in front of Keeper and Archivist, but not in front of someone who worked for her.

"What do we do?" Dorcan asked.

Nobody had an answer.

~oo00oo~

Vincent had been staring at his newspaper for a long time, never taking his eyes off a story in the local news section. He kept staring at it when the phone rang. He hit the speaker. "Hello?"

"You found the story?" Connie's voice said gently.

"Yeah. You were right." Vincent nodded, though she couldn't see it. "It had to be Yasi."

"Not necessarily." Connie offered.

"It was her." Vincent repeated.

"Yeah it was." Connie confirmed. "What are you going to do?"

"Ask her about it."

Connie was silent a moment. "You can
not
be serious."

Tap! Tap! Tap!

Vincent didn't turn to the window, unsurprised. "She's here."