the third gunman’s elbow against his chest before he could completely draw his pistol.
The fourth gunman was smarter, and tried to increase the distance between his target and himself. But the audience chamber was small; there was nowhere to go. Makoto pushed the third man into the fourth, driving them into the corner.
The third gunman’s right arm was still stuck in a cross-body draw, and pinned across his centerline as it was, he could not move it until Makoto let it go. The fourth gunman was trapped behind him, face mashed against the wall, unable to bring his weapon to bear.
The second gunman, the one who had attempted the takedown, looked up to see Makoto immobilizing two trained Wind assassins with only his left hand. Perhaps the man also noted Makoto’s adamantine stance, perfected through decades of kung fu, tai chi, aikijujutsu . . . but no. These were young men, no older than thirty. Young men no longer had the taste for martial art. That required discipline, and that was sadly lacking in this generation. They would just as soon assassinate through one of their video games.
The second gunman gaped at him, then scrambled for his pistol. “Draw that weapon and you shall die on your knees,” said Makoto. “I would rather have you sit and listen.”
The two pinned men struggled, but Makoto’s stance was strong and his ki was stronger; their combined efforts only managed to make the beads of his bracelets rattle a bit. “Your paymasters lack vision,” Makoto said, “or else they would see the wisdom in my sermon this afternoon. They lack vision, or else they would have known they cannot kill me. It is not yet my time.”
He reached into the third gunman’s jacket—the one who was caught in mid-draw—and relieved him of a sleek automatic pistol fitted with a long, matte black silencer. “Weapons such as this are of no use against me,” he said. “I have foreseen the manner of my death. I shall die by the sword.”
He buried the silencer’s muzzle in the belly of the third gunman and fired three times. The assassins trapped against the wall twitched and grew still. He removed his left palm and both of them slumped to the floor.
“Do not feel ashamed,” he told the only remaining gunman. “An assassin does not come into his prime until his fortieth birthday. You still have so much to learn.”
His father glimpsed movement in the other room, a faint presence glowing through the very walls. Makoto’s face broke out in a smile. “Oh, very good. You’re not bunglers after all; you’re a distraction.”
He put a bullet in the young man’s eye, and bent down to retrieve a second pistol from one of the dead assassins. A fusillade of bullets ripped through the wall where his head had been just a millisecond before.
“I told your companions already,” he called. “Your weapons are of no use against me.”
The newcomer was professional enough not to answer. He was also professional enough to stop shooting. He’d probably fired his first shots only as counterfire to Makoto’s, and now that Makoto had stopped shooting, so had he. This one was better trained than the last four.
Makoto looked into the next room, heedless for his safety because he knew he could not die. His father would protect him. His destiny would protect him. In the mouth of the stairwell, on the far side of the meditation room, a nondescript man in nondescript clothes aimed a silenced automatic pistol at Makoto’s center body mass. He did not fire—nor did he need to, or so he must have thought. There was but one way out of this room, and Makoto was three or four strides away, more than far enough for the assassin to gun him down.
“What have you done to Hamaya-san?” Makoto asked.
“He’ll live,” said the assassin.
“So that you can question him later?”
“Yes.”
“How did you find me here?”
“There is no place the Wind cannot reach.”
Makoto smiled and took a step forward. “Your bullets cannot harm me.”
“We’ll see.”
The muzzle flashed. A sledgehammer struck Makoto in the chest, slamming him backward. He put a crater in the drywall behind him. His body wanted to fold in on itself, to fall to the ground, but Makoto would not indulge it. Pain and death were insignificant. Fear of them was powerful, but in and of themselves they were just states of being. He pressed his shoulder blades against the wall to stabilize himself, then stood up to his full