Page 122 of Mercy Written in Blood
"And after that?"
Haruki looked back at the mural. The answer had been waiting there from the beginning. He simply hadn't wanted to admit it.
"There is one person," he said.
"Kael."
"Yes."
"You think he knows."
"I think he knows enough."
"And he'll tell you?"
Haruki smiled without humour.
"No."
"Then why ask?"
"Because once he refuses…"
Reina waited.
"I'll know exactly where to start looking."
He picked up the photograph one final time. The white lotus stared back at him in perfect silence.
Beautiful. Ancient. Impossible.
And somewhere in Takamori, someone already knew exactly what it meant.
Chapter Eleven
Renji's Apartment
Renji knew someone was outside his apartment before the knock came. The footsteps had stopped on the landing thirty seconds earlier — too deliberate for a neighbour, too heavy for the elderly woman who lived across the hall, not cautious enough for the Accord.
He remained seated at his desk and listened. There was a quiet scrape of leather against wood, as though the visitor had shifted his weight. Then silence. Then two measured knocks.
Renji looked at the clock. Eight forty-three. He had finished at the hospital an hour earlier, walked home through the eastern district and spent the last twenty minutes translating a seventeenth-century medical text that had already been translated twice by people he considered insufficiently precise. He had no appointments. Very few people knew where he lived. Fewer still would arrive without warning.
The knock came again.
"Renji."
He closed his eyes. Haruki Ishida had recovered sufficiently to become a problem.
Renji placed a ribbon between the pages of the book and rose. He did not hurry. The apartment was silent around him. Lamplight warmed the walls, falling across dark wood, old paper and objects that had survived longer than most families. Rain touched the windows in a soft, steady rhythm.
Haruki knocked a third time.
"I know you're in there."
Renji stopped on the other side of the door.
"How?"
