Jin'en leaned against the railing, the sea breeze blowing the hem of his trench coat to one side.
Porsette stood two paces away, her braid swaying in the wind, both hands in her pockets, her gilded eyes fixed on the sea.
They watched for about two minutes. Neither spoke.
"Let's go." Jin'en straightened up.
Porsette followed, half a beat behind him, her boots making little sound on the stone walkway.
The car was parked near the entrance. As Jin'en opened the door and got in, he glanced at the rearview mirror out of the corner of his eye.
A gray sedan was parked across the street, about four or five parking spaces away.
He started the engine but didn't leave right away.
Porsette buckled her seat belt and turned to look at him.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing." Jin'en pulled out of the parking space and onto the main road.
The gray car in the rearview mirror didn't follow.
Maybe it was just parked there.
Jin'en didn't dwell on it. He turned the wheel and drove west.
An old coastal road ran from Unheard-of Bay to the Bridge District. Traffic was light, the streetlights sparse, with a mountainside on the right and the sea on the left.
After about ten minutes, a pair of headlights appeared in the rearview mirror.
Jin'en looked once, then again.
"Porsette."
"Mm."
"Sit tight."
Porsette's fingers tightened briefly on her seat belt.
"That car behind us?"
"It's followed us through three intersections."
Jin'en pressed the accelerator, raising their speed from sixty to eighty. The headlights behind them sped up too, keeping the same distance.
"How many?" Porsette asked.
"Two." Jin'en had already spread out his Spatial Perception. The coordinates of the car behind them were clearly marked in his awareness, along with two living signatures inside its metal shell, one ahead of the other, in the driver's and front passenger's seats.
"Ability users?"
"I don't sense any ability fluctuations. Ordinary people."
Porsette fell silent for a moment.
"Then why are they chasing us?"
Jin'en didn't answer.
A bend lay ahead, the mountainside curving left. There was a gap in the streetlights at the entrance to the bend.
As Jin'en steered into it, he took his right hand off the wheel and touched the fishing rod inside his trench coat.
Beyond the bend, a side road led to an abandoned lookout.
Jin'en turned onto it. The tires rolled over gravel, and the car jolted twice. The other car followed.
The lookout was a dead end, enclosed by mountainside on three sides and facing the sea on the fourth, its railing rusted down to half its original height. Jin'en switched off the engine, pushed open the door, and got out.
Porsette got out too, the wind lifting the hem of her cloak. She stood behind the car door, her gilded eyes fixed on the entrance.
The other car stopped at the entrance to the lookout, its headlights going dark.
Two men got out, both wearing dark jackets. Neither held a weapon, but Jin'en noticed that the driver kept his right hand pressed to his waist.
"Mandrake," the man on the left said.
He was in his thirties, with a crew cut and an old scar on his chin.
Jin'en leaned against the front of the car, his trench coat unbuttoned, his right hand hanging naturally at his side.
"Who sent you?"
"You don't need to know." The crew-cut man took two steps forward, stopping about five meters away.
"That little girl behind you is Poinsettia, isn't she?"
Porsette's fingers tightened on the car door.
Jin'en didn't move.
"Someone's offered money for Poinsettia's coordinates." The crew-cut man gave a faint smile, as though he'd been in this line of work so long he couldn't be bothered making an expression. "Thought we'd have to stake the place out for days. Didn't expect you two to come out on your own."
Jin'en put his right hand in his pocket.
"Who's paying?"
"I told you, you don't need to know." The crew-cut man tilted his head and signaled his companion with a glance. The man circled toward the other side of the car, trying to approach Porsette from the side.
When Jin'en pulled his right hand from his pocket, the fishing rod was already in it.
The rod slid out from inside his trench coat so quickly that the crew-cut man saw only a flash of dark shadow. Then Jin'en gave his right wrist a gentle flick.
The crew-cut man didn't understand what had happened.
His right hand had only just reached the object at his waist when a pinprick-sized red dot appeared on his wrist.
He couldn't raise his hand. His whole right arm felt as though its tendons had been pulled out, numb from shoulder to fingertips. The object at his waist fell to the ground and bounced twice.
"You-"
Jin'en flicked the fishing rod again.
Something struck the hollow behind the crew-cut man's left knee with precision. He tilted left and dropped to one knee on the gravel.
The man beside him had just drawn a short knife when the tip of Jin'en's fishing rod turned toward him.
The dark rod traced an exceedingly short arc through the air. Another red dot appeared on the man's wrist, and the short knife slipped from his hand, striking the gravel with a crisp clatter.
Two men, two movements. Less than three seconds from start to finish.
Porsette stood behind the car door, her gilded eyes wide as she stared at the fishing rod in Jin'en's right hand.
The tip was so fine it was almost invisible, giving off a faint, dark gleam in the last light of sunset.
Jin'en slipped the fishing rod back inside his trench coat, walked over to the crew-cut man, and crouched down.
"Who's paying?"
The crew-cut man knelt on one knee, his right hand still numb, a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
He looked at Jin'en's face and opened his mouth twice without making a sound.
"I'll say it one more time." Jin'en's voice was flat.
"Who's paying?"
"I don't know the name." The crew-cut man's voice was much hoarser than before.
"A middleman gave us the job. Said Poinsettia had been seen in Unheard-of Bay and told us to stake it out."
"Who's the middleman?"
"A man surnamed Zhou, in the Bridge District."
Jin'en stood and took a step back.
Thinking Jin'en was letting him go, the crew-cut man started to brace a hand on his leg to stand, but Jin'en's fishing rod moved again.
The tip tapped the back of his neck. It wasn't hard, but the crew-cut man dropped back to his knees.
"Car keys."
The crew-cut man froze for a moment.
"The car keys. Throw them over."
The crew-cut man fished the keys out of his pocket and threw them onto the gravel.
Jin'en picked them up and tossed them to Porsette.
"Get in. Drive that car to the intersection up ahead and wait for me."
Porsette nodded, caught the keys, and ran toward the gray car.
Jin'en stood in the lookout, watching Porsette reverse the car out of the side road until its headlights disappeared beyond the bend.
The crew-cut man was still kneeling. The other man huddled beside the car, clutching his right wrist. The short knife lay on the gravel, untouched.
Jin'en leaned against the front of the car and took a cigarette from his pocket.
He didn't smoke often, but he always carried some.
It took two tries to light the lighter, its flame wavering in the wind.
"Are you with the Administration Bureau?"
"No."
"Anomaly hunters?"
"No."
Jin'en took a drag. The smoke he exhaled was instantly scattered by the sea breeze.
"Then what are you?"
"We do jobs for money." The crew-cut man's voice was a little steadier now, probably because he'd realized Jin'en wasn't planning to kill them.
"Around the Bridge District, we work for whoever pays. That middleman Zhou has all kinds of jobs."
Jin'en put out the cigarette and flicked the butt into a nearby pile of gravel.
"Go back and tell Zhou to keep his hands off Poinsettia's coordinates."
"That's not up to you."
Jin'en turned his head to look at him.
"Tell him Mandrake said so."
The crew-cut man stared at Jin'en for two seconds, then slowly nodded.
Jin'en turned, got into the car, started the engine, and reversed out of the lookout onto the old coastal road.
Porsette had parked the gray car beside the side road at the next intersection and was waiting against its door.
Jin'en stopped beside her and rolled down the window.
"Get in."
Porsette got out of the gray car, opened the front passenger door, climbed in, and fastened her seat belt.
She had left the gray car's keys under its seat. The engine was still running, its idle humming in the night.
"What about that car?" she asked.
"Leave it here. Someone will collect it tomorrow."
Jin'en turned onto the main road and drove toward the Bridge District.
Porsette turned to look at him, her gilded eyes pale in the dashboard light.
"That rod you just used," she said.
"What about it?"
"It wasn't the same as last time, in Victor's building." Porsette lightly touched her seat belt.
"The last time you used it, the tip was silver. This time, the tip-it was black."
Jin'en's hands paused on the steering wheel.
He lowered his head and glanced at his right hand.
Beneath his cuff, the silver markings lay quiet.
But when he'd used the fishing rod just now, he had indeed felt something different.
The "fissure" extending from the rod's tip hadn't been silver like a spatial tear.
Darker.
Deeper.
Like something seeping out from within space itself.
"Maybe it was the light," he said.
Porsette didn't answer, but Jin'en felt her gaze linger on his right hand before she turned back to the road ahead.
By the time they drove into the Bridge District, it was completely dark.
A few crooked streetlights shone at the entrance to the alley on Halfwidth Street. The pancake stall had packed up, leaving patches of water and grease on the ground.
Jin'en parked at the alley entrance and switched off the engine.
"We're not going back to the mansion tonight," he said.
Porsette turned to look at him.
"But Mother-"
"You can go back tomorrow morning. Tonight, you're coming somewhere with me."
"Where?"
Jin'en pushed open the door and got out.
Porsette followed, and the two headed deeper into the alley on Halfwidth Street.
The alley was dark, beyond the reach of the streetlights, with only a little moonlight falling through the narrow strip of sky overhead.
Jin'en walked ahead, his combat boots making dull sounds on the damp bricks.
Porsette followed behind. The hem of her cloak dragged along the ground and gathered dust, but she kept close.
Halfway down the alley, Jin'en paused.
The abandoned apartment building still stood where it had been. The newspapers covering the second-floor windows had almost rotted away, and wind poured through the holes.
Jin'en continued past the apartment building and turned into an even narrower side alley.
At its end stood an iron gate. On the wall behind it was a line of faded lettering-"17 Halfwidth Street."
Jin'en pushed open the gate and went in.
Inside was a tiny courtyard, with a few bags of cement and scattered bricks.
In one corner stood a single-story house, its window lit.
A woman stood in its doorway.
She wore a black long-sleeved top, her ponytail tied tightly, her blue-streaked bangs hanging down beside her ear.
She leaned against the doorframe, gripping a short knife in her right hand, its point downward. She had taken off her left fingerless glove and placed it on the windowsill beside her.
Jin'en stopped in the middle of the courtyard.
Porsette stood behind him, her gilded eyes peering past his shoulder at the woman in the doorway.