While Payton studied the photograph, Cipolli watched a couple uniformed officers pass by the cafe booth on their way to a booth closer to a window. Neither officer recognized them, but that was by design. The little pattern he had sketched and activated in his notebook was working well.
The figure in the enlargement which Cipolli had declared Or Shahch, the ‘Doc Shock’ from the Association’s ‘Players List’– and further identified as the mystery presence that stole away the swordswoman from the fire– really did look like the file photos. He rose a foot above all other heads in the crowd, easily seven foot tall, an aged face under an old fashioned fedora covering a full head of silver hair and an ancient gray trench coat draped over inhumanly wide shoulders. If the man indeed was the genuine spook, the coat covered a bodybuilder physique.
The figure appeared to stare directly into the camera. He stood over two hundred yards away from it, among the spectators to the fire’s aftermath. Could he have spotted the photographer from that distance?
She laid the paper down next to the photos, then returned her eyes to the enlargement, mostly to hide her confusion. No, she had to say the reason why the man could not have been there. “The Singapore office believes he was in Malaysia for the three days prior to the fire, and Buenos Aries spotted him in their territory the morning after.”
“Tokuen Kejjeil.”
She looked up at her partner in confusion. “What?”
The words were Bruxilan, but one of them was unfamiliar. Cipolli knew considerably more ancient lore than she, having trained in a more book-minded Order. Her teachers cared little for history and legend. They focused instead on the combat Arts and the practical applications. She could take her partner apart on the dojo floor, despite being nearly twenty years his senior, but he knew things, in extreme details that she could barely imagine.
With a raised eyebrow, he asked, “You didn’t study the Tale of Seven Sisters? or the Magharsid?“
She hated it when he brought up the difference in their education. It wasn’t just in offworld subjects, either. In Earth’s education, he held a masters’s, while she held a mere associate degree. She shrugged. “I think I’ve heard of the second one. It might be one of the books Master Chuen was always quoting.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “God save us all from pragmatists. You missed a lot, Payton.”
She swallowed her irritation and prompted, “Your point?”
He turned back to her. “In the Seven Sisters the writer spends a lot of time at one point describing four different Tokue. Elsewhere in the story, where a Tokuen without any modification is used, the writer means spinning between worlds. That makes five types in total. Three are now forgotten, two of them complete mysteries. The story is just too old. Too many words in the description are found nowhere else in any writings. But we have some guesses for the third forgotten type, which is called ‘Tokuen Kejjeil‘.”
She was puzzled. “How could nobody know the definition but we have the words?”
He shrugged. “Happens all the time in ancient literature. The Tale of Seven Sisters is supposed to be the oldest known complete work in all human literature. It’s seven thousand years old, way older than anything we wrote on Earth. But we have a guess what ‘Tokuen Kejjeil‘ means because of the Magharsid, an old combat instruction book. I’ll bet it was one of your fighting instructors who quoted from it.”
She snorted. “In my school, all instructors are fighting instructors.”
He shook his head and grinned. “That must have been interesting. So in that book, which is almost as old, the word ‘Tokuen‘ seems to mean traveling from point A to point B without passing through other points. Which is one possible way to interpret the term Kejjeil. Singapore found an old rumors about Shock in the files, that this particular Tokuen isn’t really forgotten. A very small handful still know it, and our guy is one of them.”
She nodded. “It would explain how he popped in and took the girl away from us, but do you have something other than rumors and moldy old books?”
With a shake of the head, he told her, “Dude, the point is, we have nothing else. The only thing that can explain his movements is something straight out of ancient legends. Doc Shock is already known for pulling off miracles like what we saw him do. Shouldn’t we be getting a little worried about this guy, now that he’s involved somehow?”
