Ronald Richter
reluctantly pitches his Grimnoir ring over the side of the airship, so that
Hitomi can’t track it.
Kaze, meanwhile, is telling Nick:
“As the New York table had a traitor in their ranks,
perhaps it is not the case that Hitomi can track our rings.”
Nick, who can see Richter over Kaze’s shoulder, nods
sagely.
“Yes,” he says, “that may be so. But best to be safe,
surely.”
Belle conns the Gee Bee to Illinois, where the
Grimnoir have a safe house on the farm of one of their retired members, Jake
Sullivan.
Wounds are dressed, notes are compared.
Richter: “We know what Hitomi wants now – new Powers.
So we find them, and we get there first, and we nail him before he can get
away.”
“How do we find them?” someone wants to know.
“Finder, remember?” Richter says, touching his brow. “And
Torch now, too, thanks to Christine.”
Christine smiles.
“I think my Power should be called Dealer,” she says. “I
can take Powers no one’s holding and hand them out.”
“Yeah, about that,” Nick says. “Did you get any kanji
off him?”
“A whole handful!” Christine enthuses. “I don’t know
what they do, but I’ve got them right here …”
She spreads her fingers and lines of ink ghost into
the air. There are five of them. They’re not actually Japanese letters, but
they’re similar in style, just way complicated.
Sullivan squints at them.
“Yeah,” he grits out. “That one’s Iron Strength. Seen
it on the Iron Guard … most of them have it. And that one’s Crackler. This one,
I think, is Beastie, or something like it. And this isn’t a kanji at all, it’s
a spell. Never seen that one before.”
“Anybody want to try them out?” Christine says.
If the spell is written in Japanese, perhaps Kaze can translate the gist of it.
ReplyDeleteThe fourth kanji is the signs for "Heavy" and "Brute" but altered, so that its meaning is not a simple combination of the two but something which could be compared to both, as "truth" is both "sweet" and "eternal" but is neither sweetness nor eternity.
DeleteThe fifth symbol combines the ideograms for "sun" and "mountain" in a way which suggests they are not to be taken literally. "Sun" symbolizes clarity, enlightenment, even truth, while "mountain" is the traditional way to imply "far away". So the power of sending the truth far away? That might be useful, if it were the power to deceive (banishing truth) or cause forgetfulness (another sense of banishing truth) or invisibility (sending clear sight far away) or ...
Belle says, "I'd love to be a Crackler, it goes so well with weatherman."
ReplyDeleteChristine says, "Crackler for Miss Belle!" and makes a hand gesture, transferring the symbol over to Belle from across the room.
DeleteBelle sees the electrical map of the room spring into being, radiating outward from her as her perceptions open. People are dull flickering glows, like clouds lit by distant lightning. Wires are strobing lines, and batteries pools of radiance. The sky overhead is a complicated whirlpool of colliding forces; she can see this even though there's a roof overhead.
And Belle herself, in her own eyes, is a virtually opaque statue of energy. She has as much lightning at her fingertips as a whole thunderstorm. And there are currents of potential drifting through the air, like cigarette smoke, which can easily conduct that power into anything she pleases.
Oops.
Janet says to Christine, "I would like to try the Beastie."
ReplyDeleteChristine says, "This one? You got it!"
ReplyDeleteShe deals with both hands, and the odd symbol expands in Janet's vision until it seems to rush past her on all sides.
The passage is cold and sudden, and leaves a lingering buzz ... which sounds like a roomful, a houseful, no, perhaps a convention full of people, all talking at once. And no one's listening.
Janet can pick out voices from the hubbub, with a little effort. Some are chittering about winter and whether they've hidden their food well enough; others patiently bite another mouthful of rich, moist earth and squirm another inch forward; others use their eyes, and see everything in glasslike clarity, moving in slow motion, from a viewpoint just below the clouds.
Each thinks of itself as Me, but Janet can tell from context that some are squirrels, some worms, some birds, and some are fish, although the fish don't think of themselves as wet, which makes it a little longer to grasp.
If Janet focuses more intently, she can see through a hawk's eyes, steering it where she wants to look. It' s harder with the cat on the barn roof, because she doesn't use her eyes as much as her nose. Janet's not used to constructing her mental map out of odors.
Fortunately, Cherryblossom (the cat's name) does know how to do so. And once Janet forms her preference, Cherryblossom hurries to carry it out, as though it were her own idea.