“Nor anyone to back you up when you find yourself in a corner,” observed Tanaseda. “May we please dispense with this childishness, Kovacs-san? You speak of incentives. Without the information I have supplied, you would now be captive with your colleagues, awaiting execution. And I have offered to revoke my own writ for your elimination. Is this not enough for the return of a cortical stack you have in any case no use for?”

I smiled. “You’re full of shit, Tanaseda. You’re not doing this for Hirayasu. He’s a fucking waste of good sea air, and you know it.”

The yakuza master seemed to coil tighter into himself as he stared at me. I still wasn’t sure why I was pushing him, what I was pushing for.

“Hirayasu Yukio is my brother-in-law’s only son.” Very quietly, barely a murmur across the space between us, but edged with contained fury.

“There is giri here that I would not expect a southerner to understand.”

“Motherfucker,” said Jad wonderingly.

“Ah, what do you expect, Jad?” I made a noise in my throat. “In the end, he’s a criminal, no different than the fucking haiduci. Just a different mythology and the same crabshit delusions of ancient honour.”

“Tak—”

“Back off, Tod. Let’s get this out in the open where it belongs. This is politics, and nothing even remotely cleaner. Tanaseda here isn’t worried about his nephew once removed. That’s just a side bonus. He’s worried he’s losing his grip, he’s afraid of being punished for a fucked-up blackmail attempt. He’s watching Segesvar get ready to make friends with Aiura Harlan, and he’s terrified the haiduci are going to get cut in on some serious global action in return for their trouble. All of which his Millsport cousins are likely to lay pretty directly at his front door, along with a short sword and a set of instructions that read insert here and slice sideways. Right, Tan?”

The muscle on the left lost it, as I suspected he might. A needle-thin blade dropped from his sleeve into his right hand. Tanaseda snapped something at him and he froze. His eyes blazed at me and his knuckles whitened around the hilt of the knife.

“See,” I told him. “Masterless samurai don’t have this problem. There’s no leash. If you’re ronin, you don’t have to watch honour sold out for political expediency.”

“Tak, will you just fucking shut up,” groaned Murakami.

Tanaseda stepped past the taut, rippling tension on the furious bodyguard.

He watched me through narrowed eyes, as if I was some kind of poisonous insect he needed to examine more closely.

“Tell me, Kovacs-san,” he said quietly. “Is it your wish to die at the hands of my organisation after all? Are you looking for death?”

I held his eye for a few seconds, then made a tiny spitting sound.