The Night Watch

by Sean Stewart

  Air exploded out of him and he toppled over like a chopped reed, diaphragm in spasms.

  Claire jerked him up off the mat and held him for a moment by his collar. “Mind your manners,” she said. Then she dropped him and walked back to the other Snows.

  The Southside captain held his hands out to Water Spider. “It’s not your boy’s fault. You can’t compete without a familiar. Everyone in the squad has been wired up for at least eight years. That’s eight years of absolute optimization: muscle mass, respiration, heart and lung capacity, reflex arcs—everything. Every strike, every block, every throw. We barely have to pay attention. If she had to, Claire’s body could replay exactly what your man did in the last two falls. And she’s spent less time in combat training than any of my regulars.”

  Jen’s face burned. The fucker was embarrassed for him! Fucking big-nose cat-cunt licker.

  Water Spider said, “How interesting.” He looked at his bodyguard. “Jen?”

  By the Buddha’s three rotting testicles! Jen moaned inside. He sucked another breath through his clenched teeth, and grinned at Claire. “One more? Double or nothing?”

  “This is pointless,” Claire said.

  The Southsider captain spoke softly. “There is no shame in losing, sir. Not when you are outgunned.”

  Water Spider’s face was as distant as clouds.

  Jen rubbed his aching stomach. “Please, Captain: I am my lord’s personal attendant. Your Claire has already failed at such a job. How can I pass up a chance to learn from her?”

  Claire turned and walked back onto the mat.

  “Claire, I have not authorized—”

  Her pale eyes locked on Jen like gun sights. “Let’s go.”

  Jen bowed to Water Spider, and then to Claire. Halfway up from the bow, he raised his head and spat in her face.

  Even when she hissed and raised her hands he didn’t underestimate her. He drove in with a high kick, giving her something to block on pure reflex, following immediately with a fast back-knuckle strike to the face. At the last instant he opened his hand, turning the back-knuckle into a ringing back-handed slap, and then dodged back out of range. The sound of the slap echoed from the gym walls in the shocked silence that followed.

  Somewhere in the background a couple of the Dragon’s fighters jeered and whistled. The stupid fucks had some ideas about honor and fair play and no doubt were embarrassed that anyone from their city, even a thug like Jen, should have spat in the Southsider’s face instead of getting his ass whipped with dignity. Fuck ’em. Jen admired his handprint on Claire’s white cheek.

  The Southside captain shook his head. “You dirty little shit.”

  Water Spider said, “Is there a problem, Commander?”

  “Problem! You saw what the little bastard did.”

  “Three weeks ago a minotaur came out of the slums and ripped the arms off an old man behind his house on Carrall Street and drank his blood.” Water Spider glanced at Jen, who stood piously at attention. “Perhaps you and your usual enemies have a set of rules worked out for your encounters, Commander. Alas, we have managed to arrange no such niceties with our demons, or with the monsters that come from Downtown. We expect any fighting to be…no holds barred.”

  The Snows’ captain, a chunky man in his early forties who could no doubt bench press Jen for hours, eyed them both. His anger rapidly faded to something like contempt.

  Jen said, “There is no dishonor in serving well.”

  Claire wiped the spit off her face. Blood trickled from a split lip, shocking against her eerie snow-white skin. Lines like veins of frost flowered and faded across her melt-water eyes. “Go again, little man? Double or nothing.”

  Water Spider nodded.

  Jen fought to hide his shock. Had he failed somehow? Could Water Spider have expected him to beat the Snow? Was he being punished for his weakness? Was he now expendable?

  He touched his lucky amulet. Flame can’t be broken, he told himself. Smoke can’t be held. Be fire. Be fire. “Let’s go,” he said. He still couldn’t seem to get his breath back and his right leg was shaking. Every Southsider would know it. They all knew he was inferior. They had known that from the beginning. But now they knew he was afraid. He yelled and leapt to the attack.

  Seconds later he was flat on the mat with Claire’s knee in his chest. Fireworks burst and faded before his eyes. Slowly and deliberately she took his cat-bone charm between the fingers of her left hand and snapped it in half.

  Jen screamed, grabbing for the broken amulet. She held the halves up and then snapped them in two again. Then she let the pieces drop on his chest. “You broke my luck, you bitch!” He swore vilely in Cantonese. The collar of his scarlet shirt was grainy with bone dust. “Well? Are you done? Or do you want to break more bones?”

  She took her knee off his chest. “I’m done.”

  Later that afternoon, Jen limped stiffly over to his master, who sat enjoying the classical garden at the heart of Government House. “Old man!” Water Spider called. “Please, venerable sir, won’t you join me on this bench?”

  Jen scowled. “May your penis fall away and be carried off by cats.” He had rubbed his skin red with Tiger Balm liniment, but even so, his bones still seemed to creak like bamboo wind chimes at every step.

  “Sit,” Water Spider said, unoffended. “Let your mind find tranquillity.”

  “But—”

  “And your mouth find silence.”

  Jen shut up.

  Like a closed fist, the garden held yin and yang within itself. Wind and rain-carved sculptures of Lake Tai limestone were balanced against crooked pines, a harmony of living and unliving. The broad flatness of the central pond was interrupted by a jutting rocky island in its midst. Though scarcely twenty paces in diameter, this island was bored through with caves and grottoes underneath. A black-crowned night heron, smaller and more furtive than the great blue herons that usually graced the gardens of Government House, lurked at the island’s edge, watching Jen and his master.

  “I wish to give up my post,” Jen said.

  “Request denied.”

  “Why? Why gamble on me? Surely you can see that any Snow would make a better bodyguard.”

  “True.”

  “So do it. You would be a fool not to throw away an old card for a better one.”

  Overhead, small white clouds quarrelled in the afternoon sky. Water Spider said, “My father once told me of a wise saying of his time: ‘Own property, but lease cars.’”

  “What?”

  “The Snows I can only lease, Jen. In this case, I prefer to own.”

  “Honor is everything to the Southsiders. They would rather die in your service than break their contracts.”

  “Mm. I could find one to die for me, no doubt. But would one be shamed for me?” Water Spider looked shrewdly at Jen, who flushed under his eyes. “Now that’s a different question, eh?”

  Jen grunted. Trying not to whimper, he lowered himself to the tiles at the edge of the pond. The heron watched him impassively from one yellow-ringed eye. Jen made a face at it.

  Little suns were radiating from the patches of Tiger Balm smeared on Jen’s body. I should have just bathed in it, he thought morosely. “So why we don’t use familiars ourselves? There must be something we could trade to the Snows for them.” He winced, rubbing moodily at the burning point under his rib cage where Claire’s back-knuckle strike had taken him. “A single one of these Snows could demolish the Shrouded Ones without breaking a sweat.”

  “You speak of things you do not understand,” Water Spider snapped. Jen looked up, surprised. “The Shrouded Ones are a mystery you do not grasp.” Water Spider gazed into the darkness of the pond. “When I was a boy, I used to play with a little girl who lived at the end of our street. Her name was Mai. We would climb trees together, or pretend to be robbers or ghost-catchers.

  “Then one day Mai didn’t come out to play. I saw that a shadow had fallen on her house. There is no better word. Even in th
e brightest sunshine, darkness clung to it. The next day there was a gargoyle on the roof, perfectly still, hunched over the living-room window. The next day another. By the end of the week, there were four of them. At night you could hear them whispering. Now the house was always dark, wrapped in shadows even at noon.

  “We all stayed on the other side of the street, of course. We tried not to go down that way. But at the end of the week, because Mai was my friend, I went to stare at her house from behind a neighbor’s hedge. I saw Mai and her mother looking out from a window on the second floor. Mai with her little face pressed up against the glass. Her mother grabbing her by the shoulder. Watching.

  “I ran home crying to my father. All that week he had been very deep in his wine, but he had just awakened from a long sleep when I returned, and I told him about my friend Mai. I had told him before, of course, but he had not remembered. He looked at me for a long time, and then he asked if he should save them. I said of course he should. I said that just because Mai had no daddy, that was no reason she should die.

  “He gave me a curious look, and then he did a very strange thing. He took a long hot bath, and when he came out of the bathroom I saw that he had shaved as well. He put on his finest clothes, and belted on this,” Water Spider said, tapping the ancient and beautiful sword he carried at his side. “I asked him where he was going. He said he had to ask a favor of some people he had known once, long before.

  “Midnight had swallowed Mai’s house by the time he returned. With him came a small man he did not introduce. This man frightened me greatly, for he was dressed all in white. He did not speak, and his eyes were like a road that no longer has a destination. He walked up the path to Mai’s house, and knocked. Gargoyles boiled up around him like leaves tossed by a storm, but they did not touch him. He passed inside. Some time later he returned with Mai and her mother.

  “As soon as they left the shadow of the house, the mother gave a great cry and fell to the ground. Two thin snakes slid from the pupils of her eyes, and another one, much greater, poured from her mouth, coiling around Mai. Then, I heard the voice of the man in white, for he gave a great cry, and grabbing the large snake around the neck he thrust it into his mouth and devoured it. The first of the small snakes he crushed beneath his foot, but the other slid into Mai through her screaming mouth. It took many months for Hsieh Wen the herbalist to cleanse her of it, and she went blind from the potions he gave her.”

  Jen’s mouth was dry. “The mother was dead?”

  “Worse.”

  “And Mai?”

  “That I do not know,” Water Spider said softly. “I have not seen her in many years. I heard once that she had gone to serve the Lady in the Garden, but I do not know if that was true. It was many months before she could come out to play with me again. When she did, she could not see, and I was a boy of great energy. In this I betrayed her, for I was impatient, and her white eyes scared me.”

  “If it hadn’t been for you, she would never have lived at all.”

  Water Spider looked deeply into the water. “To do what is right and honorable is small credit to a man. We expect it. A lifetime of accomplishment does not excuse the moment’s cowardice. A hero who betrays a friend is worse than the fleeing coward; for he knows full well what he does.” A light breeze passed through the branches of the plum trees that bordered the pond, shaking down a scatter of blossoms to float on the water’s surface. Water Spider said, “Do you think one of your Snows could have gone into that shadowed house?”

  “Mm.”

  “We are like the T’ang: barbarians pushing always on our borders, petty squabbles weakening us from within. We need a strong Emperor, but the throne sits empty.” Water Spider opened his hands and allowed himself a small smile. “We poor bureaucrats do what we can. The barbarians from Downtown are much like men. Distorted, deformed, grotesque—but men just the same. Yes, the Snows will beat them back. But there are worse things than those poor mockeries of men, Jen, and older.”

  “Mm,” Jen said again. He never knew what to say when Water Spider got mystical on him.

  “I did not think it was a good idea to bring the Southsiders here when we voted in Council on it, and I do not think it a good idea now,” Water Spider said. “I worry that the Double Monkey will cheat them and the Dragon will want to fight them and the Lady in the Garden will find them…unaesthetic.” He opened his hands. “But they are here and we must accept that. We are sending a delegation to the Southside to report on the progress of this venture. Each of the Powers will be represented, and of course Li Bing will go to speak for the Mandarinate. Her daughter, Li Mei, works in my Ministry. I think I will send her along too. I would like a pair of eyes there.”

  Water Spider paused. “Hm. It occurs to me that it would be polite to invite someone from Cedar House as well.” Cedar House was several miles to the east, just where Chinatown was walled off by the great Forest that had swept over much of Vancouver in 2004. The family that dwelt in Cedar House had a special relationship with the wood. While the brooding Forest was not precisely one of the Powers of Chinatown, Water Spider felt it politic to keep on its good side. “Jen, I have an errand for you. Go to the east end and find a friend or relative who will take an invitation to Cedar House. Do not venture under the trees yourself, of course.”

  “No fucking fear there,” Jen said. He would rather go ten more rounds with the white devil Claire than set foot in the gloomy Forest that had swallowed a million people during the Dream and never let them loose. “Should I wait for a reply?”

  “Oh no, nobody will come,” Water Spider said. “Raining Chiu was on the last delegation. Do you not know this story? I suppose you were still busy robbing wine stores and beating people up back then. The daughter of Cedar House went to the Southside five years ago, met a man there and married him and had a child by him, too. Their marriage fell apart and she has since returned home with her daughter. I think it unlikely she will choose to go back to that white cold hell. But it is polite to ask.”

  “So all I have to do is give the message to someone who will take it to Cedar House?”

  “Exactly.”

  Jen’s bones and muscles creaked and whined at the thought of having to get up and run errands. “Master? Why did you bid me go the extra round with Claire-the-bitch? You must have known what would happen.”

  “I wanted you to know just what they are, these Snows,” Water Spider said. “I want you to understand their strengths. Because I fear that one day I will need you to kill one for me.”

  Soon Jen left on his errand and Water Spider returned to the offices of his Ministry within Government House. Only then did the black-crowned heron who had been watching them from the pond shake out his blue wings and climb into the sky, beating over the red walls of Government House and across the street, to drop down into the Lady’s Garden there.

  In this place was beauty beyond the skill of painters to depict, for here dwelt the elegant Lady who was one of the three great Powers of Chinatown. A time was swiftly approaching when Chinatown would change utterly, and the Lady, like cunning Double Monkey and the mighty Dragon, had many eyes hidden in the eaves of Government House. Of all that Water Spider had said, her servant the heron told her, and of many other things beside. “Soon or never,” the heron said. “If you want to fill the Emperor’s throne, soon or never.”

  “Soon, I think.” The Lady stroked her servant’s black head-feathers. “Even if Chinatown survives, the Powers are dwindling. It would be good to have an Emperor on the throne when we fade away at last.”

  “The Lady is eternal,” the heron said stoutly.

  “Nothing lives forever, not even gods,” she said gently. “For all his strength, the Dragon cannot best Death. For all his cunning, Double Monkey cannot cheat him. Shall I last when they pass away? No. Our part in the world is ending. We have just a little time, a breath, to leave all in harmony for the coming dawn.”

  “The Dragon does not care about harmony. Harmony is no
t the Double Monkey’s love.”

  The Lady smiled. “They will serve it nonetheless. It is my role to make it so.”

  The heron fluffed and preened and stepped nervously from one foot to the other. “And do you then see who must be Emperor?” he asked. “I have studied all of Chinatown’s noble men, all our finest ladies. I cannot see one of Imperial quality.”

  The Lady’s smile broadened. “Perhaps you should not look at fine ladies or noble men,” she said. But who she meant to put on Chinatown’s throne, she would not say.

  Chapter

  Three

  The young woman who offered to carry Jen’s message to Cedar House was named Wire. She and Raining had been friends since they were girls, and Wire was quite sure Raining ought to go back across the Rocky Mountains and patch things up with Nick, the Southside man she had married. Wire could just imagine Raining, left to her own devices, settling for a lonely, loveless life; she had always had a taste for bitter things, an eye for shadows. Wire, more sensibly, liked her stories to have happy endings.

  Wire lived a couple of miles from Government House on the southern edge of Chinatown, right against the Forest. From her balcony she could just touch the petals of the blossoming cherry tree that stood between the human world of her apartment and the copse of birch and poplar that formed the outskirts of Raining’s wood. Jen had come too late in the afternoon for Wire to set out that day. Welcome as she usually was in the Forest, she would never go there after dark, not without Raining. So she paced around her apartment making plans and sandwiches for the next day’s journey. She meant to get to bed early and start out at dawn, but boredom drove her out of her apartment that evening to visit friends. What with a cup of one thing and a bowl of another, she didn’t get back until after midnight, and she slept in, snoring gently, until well after sunrise.

  When she finally woke it was at the touch of a god’s eyes. He was sitting in the cherry tree beyond her balcony, clad in the body of a red-crested woodpecker, his powerful head thrust back, his beak open and laughing. She knew he was a god because of the way the skin crawled on her back, the weight of his black eyes, and the way the air smelled of lightning and peaches.