A hail of bullets struck the right side of her cover. Chips of rock danced, forcing her back to center.
Then, blondie pulled her clip to reload.
Kino was momentarily puzzled; surely she had rounds left in her magazine. The element of surprise?
A moment later, she heard the crunch of feet on sand.
"You fought well," the blonde said. "But I'm about to end things. If you come out now, I won't shoot. I'll accept your surrender."
"Let me think about it."
Blondie laughed. "Sure, girlie."
Hair stood up on the back of Kino's neck as the soft footsteps circled slowly toward her left. She pressed herself against a bent steel door that jutted out of the rubble. Her adversary would very soon reach the extreme left end of the rock pile.
Suddenly, the woman opened fire, bolting around behind the pile. The air filled with bullets, spent shells, and noise. Bullets sprayed the ground behind the rubble, but Kino was no longer there. Instead, they found the steel door and ricocheted back.
Blondie screamed and hit the ground, crouching until the last ricochet had spent itself. She started to rise.
"Liar." Kino aimed the Woodsman around the door and fired three quick shots into the blonde's shoulder .
She dropped the rifle.
Aim unwavering, Kino emerged from behind the door.
The woman laughed and shook her head. "Okay, I'll surrender...
"Thank you," said Kino.
Blood oozing from her shoulder, the woman smiled and said, "You know, you're pretty cute. I could adopt you, too."
"Sorry," said Kino, "one mother was more than enough for me."
Hermes, who'd slept through the morning, woke when Kino entered the room carrying a hefty bundle wrapped in paper.
"Welcome back, Kino. Still safe, I see. No less than expected. What's that? Consolation prize or something?"
Kino carefully lowered the package onto the bed. "No, something I need for tomorrow."
Kino opened the package and lifted out a bottle filled with the green liquid explosive that the Cannon used. Next to appear was a small cardboard box filled with.44 caliber hollow-point bullets. From their luggage, she produced a small portable stove, placed a few chunks of solid fuel into it, and lit them. Then she washed a teacup.
She didn't make tea. Instead, she put some liquid explosive into the teacup and put it over the flame.
Hermes trembled slightly. "Are you sure you should be doing that, Kino?" When she didn't answer he pressed, "What are you doing, Kino?"
Frowning in concentration, Kino answered without turning around. "Boiling it down."
"Wow. Gee. That... that sounds... dangerous, that's how it sounds. Why would you do something like that?"
Kino removed the cup of thickened explosive from the fire before she answered the question. "This concentrates the explosive, which creates a stronger blast, which propels the bullet from the gun at a higher speed."
Kino gently stirred the contents of the cup, which had boiled down to a dense syrup. Then she filled the sink with water and cooled the bottom of the cup. By now the stuff looked like mint jelly.
Kino picked out one of the hollow-point bullets and carefully loaded the concentrated liquid explosive into the hole at the tip. She filled it almost to the rim with gel, then placed a single percussion cap over it. She covered the percussion cap with epoxy she usually used to mend minor damage to Hermes' parts- screw heads, bolt holes, and the like. It grew very hard when it dried, and it dried very quickly.
"Uh... isn't that stuff technically mine?" he asked.
She smiled grimly. "May I use some of your epoxy to try to remain alive tomorrow, Hermes?"
"Oh, sure. No problem. Take as much as you want. Just tell me why."
But Kino's attention was on her task. She incised a deep cross in the nearly hardened epoxy with the blade of a knife.
"Done!" She picked up the altered bullet, happy as a child.
"You're not going to tell me why, are you?"
"Go back to sleep, Hermes, and dream of both of us driving away from here tomorrow. That is... if motorcycles dream."
He did go back to sleep. But if he dreamed, he didn't remember.
On the third morning in this city, Kino woke at dawn, keenly aware of the day. What would she have done, she wondered, if their contest had lasted four days or five? She didn't know, and didn't waste time thinking about it. One way or another, she vowed, she would be free of this place by sunset.
She dismantled, cleaned, and reloaded the Woodsman, and then practiced with it as always.
Meanwhile, Hermes slept.
After breakfast, Kino asked the guard at the door for information about the history and laws surrounding the contest. The guard obligingly found a book on the subject and brought it to her. She sat down on the narrow bed and went through the text, being careful to read between the lines.
As the guards had told her, the contest had started seven years earlier, when the previous king, who had been loved for his firm but compassionate rule, died quit e suddenly and under suspicious circumstances. Court doctors examined him, and one suggested he had been poisoned. Oddly, that doctor, too, died a premature death.
The king's son, Prince Yukio, had assumed his father's throne and immediately set about replacing the dead king's ministers and courtiers. They were too old, he argued, too stodgy.
Too dangerous, Kino suspected, and perhaps too likely to oppose their new ruler.
Disturbingly, the purges even extended to the king's own family; brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, everyone was accused of unspecified treachery and either executed or exiled.
Sounds familiar, Kino thought ruefully.
Of his family, only King Yukio's wife survived, albeit briefly. The new queen was so overcome with grief that she killed herself. Their only child disappeared, and his whereabouts were unknown to this day. Rumor had it that he had been killed or exiled or imprisoned underground.
Once Yukio was crowned King, he began to lead a life of debauchery, imposing arbitrary laws on this naturally bountiful kingdom. Of course, at first there was some resistance. But the citizens soon adjusted to lives of heedless pleasure, or at least recognized the need to appear as if they had adjusted. Clearly, a failure to do so was unhealthy and unwise. They were trapped.
According to the history, there were enterprising souls who went mad and disappeared into the countryside; others ran away like the abject cowards they were.
Curiously, it was these self-exiles who prompted the creation of the contest. They, the history said, had spumed the blessed gift of citizenship, thereby proving themselves unworthy of it. Citizenship, King Yukio decreed, must therefore be earned so that only the most worthy should own it.
If by worthy, Kino thought, you mean murderous.
It was almost noon when Hermes finally woke; Kino had just been summoned to the final battle. He watched her as she placed an empty cylinder in the Cannon and loaded one of the chambers with liquid explosive, cramming in at least twice the usual amount. She did not add wadding, but instead loaded her doctored bullet directly atop the explosive gel. Finally, she fixed a single percussion cap to the back of the chamber containing the bullet.
Hermes uttered a metallic cough. "So, what's the plan? The way you've got that set up, you can only fire once."
Kino smiled. "Once is all I need."
Spinning the cylinder so it was ready to be fired, she placed the Cannon in the holster. Then she rose and loaded Hermes with all their baggage, laying her long, brown coat across his seat.
"Let's go, Hermes. I'd like you to watch this round."
"Why?"
Kino took him off his stand and pushed him out of the cell. He seemed to be dragging his tires, but that might have been her imagination. "I have a plan. And the moment the fight is over, I want to leave for someplace that has showers."
She left Hermes standing at the contestants' entrance in the care of a couple of middle-aged guards. Directly opposite him, up in the stands, the king sipped refreshment in his private box.
Kino strode to the center of the coliseum, accompanied by a roar of applause. When she had reached the center of the arena, her final opponent emerged from the opposite side. As he walked toward the clearing, Hermes looked him over carefully.
He was a young man – perhaps in his late teens or early twenties – tall, slender, and well-proportioned. His collar-length hair was black like Kino's and swayed gently in the breeze. He wore blue jeans and a green sweater with cloth padding on the shoulders and elbows.