by Sean Stewart
Huang Ti glanced furtively at the glass-paned doors that divided the conference chamber from the Scholars Garden outside. “Could they do the same here?”
“We have placed many sentries around Government House, and very powerful charms—but yes, it is possible. But why haven’t they used such devices before? I must still believe, looking at their troops, that their technological resources are limited. It is possible that they have more explosives, and that we are under surveillance. If so, the five of us currently gathered in this room would make a very appealing target.”
“Perhaps in the future we should flock less thickly together,” Johnny Ma suggested.
Water Spider nodded. “It would probably be wise to use runners to communicate, at least until we can get reinforcements from the Southside. And this time, may I suggest we pay for the Southsiders to attack barbarians in force. ‘Crude yet quick strategies have been known / But skill has yet to be observed in long operations.’”
“More Southsiders!” the Purse protested. “We have already paid dearly for the pleasure of cremating their first cohort.”
“We have gone over this before,” Water Spider said sharply. It was Huang Ti who had pushed to have the Southsiders come in the first place. He appreciated their usefulness for defending against the barbarians, but more particularly he had liked the idea of the Mandarinate having some muscle of its own for once. When the Southsiders arrived, he had been quick to strike a deal with them to accompany his men on inspections and tax collection rounds. The merchants hated paying any taxes, and bribed Johnny Ma scandalously to look the other way. He claimed he passed all the money he received to Huang Ti’s treasuries…but there were other kinds of bribes, and Water Spider was pretty sure Johnny had accepted them all.
He still liked him better than pompous, greedy Huang Ti, though.
“What of the dead Snows?” Grace Shih asked. “The Southsiders will want to know about their sons and daughters.”
“We do not believe there will be any survivors among the troops who were in their barracks when the attack commenced,” Water Spider said. “At least one guard on perimeter duty escaped and fell back to the barricades. Another accompanied me from the scene. There may be three or four more survivors, but I doubt any more than that. The monsters were extremely efficient.”
“The white woman who came back with you,” Grace Shih said quietly. “Where is she now?”
“I have asked her to wait in my offices. I will want to question her further.”
“She must be in very great distress. Did you leave anyone to attend upon her?”
Water Spider looked out the glass-paned doors, into the darkness and the streaming rain. “But of course.”
“You!” Claire growled. Water Spider had put her in the care of the thuggy little streetfighter who had spat in her face. Charming.
Jen shrugged. “Hey, fuck you. First my charm is broken, now I get stuck with your cold luck. Brr. Look what happened to the rest of your friends.”
Claire went still. “What a lovely thing to say.”
“You broke my luck.”
“You spat in my face!”
“I’ve wiped my nose on my sleeve too, and once I picked up my hand before all cards were dealt!” Jen said hotly. “You don’t break a man’s luck for such a small-small thing! A finger perhaps. Even an arm, if your pride demanded it. This I can understand. But to break my luck!”
“But—!” Claire collected herself. “You’re right. I should have broken your arm.”
Jen nodded stiffly. “I accept your apology.” He studied her. “You could use some hot wine.”
“No thank you.”
“The Minister told me to see to your needs. Would you like your wine plain or spiced?”
“No thank you.”
Jen threw up his hands. “Fine with me.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
Claire looked at the floor. “Spiced, please.”
Jen nodded. “Wait here.” He ducked around a folding wall and pattered off.
While Jen was gone Claire examined Water Spider’s office. The furnishings were elegant but austere: a single low table, its top faced with black marble, rested in the center of the red tiled floor. A great blackwood desk dominated the western wall, its vast area divided into hundreds of drawers, cubbies, trays and cabinets, a honeycomb of tiny doors and slats, minutely carved and ornamented. Like the Mandarinate itself, Claire thought.
She tried not to think of the burning barracks, the screaming men inside.
Looking through the north-facing window, Claire could see the rooftops of the Lady’s Garden across the street. Lady in the Garden, the Dragon, and…oh, the trickster god. Double Monkey, that was it. Yuck. Much nicer to live as they did back home, with all their gods and spirits locked away on the North Side, instead of having them everywhere underfoot as they were here. Claire looked at the Garden and shivered. She had heard that the seasons ran differently there, and now she could see it was true. Although in the world’s time it was the middle of a damp spring night, summer sunshine shone through the Garden’s piecework windows, and glowed above its red-tiled roofs. Unnerving, that.
It was Jackson who had told her the rumor about the Garden. He was dead now. They were all dead now, pretty much. Everyone but her. “Why couldn’t you save the rest of them?” she whispered. But if The Harrier heard her somehow, she made no answer. She had saved her daughter’s life and then disappeared, leaving the rest of them to die.
How many times had Claire tried to tell Emily this: the gods are cruel, and do not care as we care.
No sign of heating vents or air conditioning in Water Spider’s room. Claire remembered Emily telling her that it was a point of honor among the Mandarinate’s scholar officials not to seem soft. Their life was to be given in service to the Emperor, not to their own creature comforts. Sounded like a good deal for the Emperor. For that matter, Winter and Emily themselves were very good at substituting status for cash when it came to paying their prized retainers. A nifty sleight of hand. Hell, it had worked on her.
No, that wasn’t fair. Emily hadn’t swindled Claire’s duty out of her. She had paid for it as her grandfather had taught her to, with the coin of her own fierce loyalty. There could be no truer currency.
Emily must have heard about the explosion. No doubt the girl would be praying for her. A rush of gratitude surprised Claire.
The only homely detail in Water Spider’s room was the sideboard that stood against the southern wall. Here was a kettle and a tiny kerosene burner, a ceramic teapot no bigger than a man’s fist, a set of terra-cotta cups and saucers, and a row of canisters filled with teas, their names written in Chinese characters, and below in English in a fine copperplate hand—oolong in two varieties, pearl tea, ginseng tea, lichee fruit tea, blackberry and raspberry teas, First and Third Quality jasmine tea, and three First Quality teas in special brass canisters: Emperor Tea, Dragon’s Well Tea, and Ti Kuan Yi, under which was written Iron Goddess of Mercy.
There was no reason she should feel guilty for wanting to take a closer look at the tea. Claire glanced around. No sign of Jen yet.
The brass lid of the third canister was cool to her touch as she lifted it off. The tea inside was a mottled green-black; whole leaves, not flaky or powdery as she had expected, but tightly withered, like the mummified hulls and wings of some insect. The hilt of a steel scoop showed through, and she caught the faint dry subtle scent of the Ti Kuan Yi, its breath of burning autumn leaves. Of sorrow accepted.
A runner bowed in the doorway of the conference chamber. “Radio message from the Southside, Your Excellencies.”
“Li Bing at last,” the Lidded Eye said. “Water Spider, would you act in place of the Honorable Minister for Foreign Affairs?”
The runner wheeled an enormous blackwood cabinet into the conference chamber and opened its ornately carved doors to reveal the radio within. He adjusted the controls, and then surrendered them to the Honorable Minister for Border
s. “Li Bing!” Water Spider said, in the old Cantonese.
“I’m sorry,” a pleasant voice answered in English. “This is Major David Oliver speaking.”
“May I speak to Li Bing?”
“I’m afraid she is not available at this time.”
“Not available!” Water Spider dragged on the vile marijuana cigarette. “Then may I ask you when your reinforcements will arrive?”
“I am afraid there is a small problem we must discuss first.”
“What?” A dull premonition of disaster began to settle in the pit of Water Spider’s stomach.
“The airplane which originally carried your delegation is on its way back to you. It may well be nearing your local airspace as we speak. Your Li Mei is on this airplane. So is Emily Thompson.”
Water Spider’s eyes narrowed. “We are honored that Southside’s heir wishes to survey the situation in person.”
“Winter requests that you send this flight back to us as soon as possible. Once Miss Thompson returns we will be more than happy to send your reinforcements.”
Water Spider rolled his eyes but kept his voice polite. “How do you suggest we accomplish this?”
“What?” Puzzled. “Order the airplane to turn around.”
“Ah. I am afraid this is not possible. Your military aircraft, I now recall, are all set to respond to a central authority. Ours, however, owe their allegiances directly and only to their owners.”
There was a pause. “You are joking.”
“Not at all.”
“You sent a diplomatic delegation in an aircraft you could not control from the ground?”
“We have no other kind.”
Another pause. “To whom does this particular airplane belong?”
“One of the leading citizens of Richmond, a sister community of ours. He lent its use to Li Bing. Unfortunately, this gentleman is presently beyond my ability to contact. You may recall there is an invasion in our streets. If you must persuade the Phoenix to return, your best strategy would be to ask Li Bing to speak to it, as its owner has temporarily transferred its allegiance to her.”
“I am sorry, but I do have to ask again—are you joking?”
“Major Oliver, I am in no mood for levity.”
“The airplane owes a personal allegiance to a friend of Li Bing’s.”
“Correct. The machine has been in the family for years. I believe its personality was originally that of a much-loved summer cottage. When flooding made the cottage area undesirable, they had the program retrained and fitted into the aircraft.”
There was a long pause.
At length the Snow began again, more slowly. “The situation is rather delicate. While we are not suggesting that Li Bing’s daughter actually abducted Ms. Thompson, I am afraid that is the way some people will take Emily’s absence. As I am sure you are aware, Ms. Thompson is a woman with considerable responsibilities on the Southside. Her disappearance cannot be disguised or overlooked.”
“I appreciate the delicacy of your—of our situation,” Water Spider said. In fact he appreciated mostly that this idiocy was costing precious minutes without reinforcements.
“There is also the possibility that Ms. Thompson was a willing party to this escapade,” the Southsider continued. “She may invent stories about her life at home, or plead for sanctuary by trading on your feelings. I want to emphasize that this cannot be allowed.”
Water Spider coughed out a cloud of acrid smoke. “May I remind you that you have, in essence, made the safety of Chinatown contingent on her return? How well Miss Thompson attends to her responsibilities you know better than I. But as Li Mei’s superior, let me assure you that no circumstance exists in which she would put Miss Thompson ahead of the welfare of her people.”
“Perhaps then you could contact her on board the aircraft and convince her to return to the Southside immediately. We would be far more comfortable if they did not land at your end. Once on the ground, it becomes so much easier for something unexpected to go wrong.”
“What do you expect us to do?” Water Spider said, exasperated. “Shoot the plane down?”
There was another long pause. “That would seem unwarranted to you.”
Oh. “Yes, it would.” What under heaven could Emily Thompson be doing that would make her grandfather willing to shoot down the plane she was on? Water Spider took another drag on his cigarette. “Please. Accept my word on this. As soon as I can reach Li Mei, I will explain the situation. You will have Miss Thompson back as quickly as humanly possible. Your reasons for wanting her back, whatever they are, can hardly be as pressing as my reasons for wanting your soldiers.”
“Excellent,” the Snow said. “We have already dispatched two aircraft in pursuit. They will be arriving there shortly, in case it seems more appropriate for Ms. Thompson to return in one of our planes. Let me assure you, we have three squadrons of heavily armed troops standing ready to be delivered to your doorstep in thirty minutes.”
Water Spider hung up. “How reassuring.”
Johnny Ma grinned. “Have you ever heard a promise that was at the same time so neatly a threat?”
“Two planes are on the way. It is perhaps eight hundred kilometers from Southside to here, over the mountains,” Water Spider said, calculating. “An hour and a half if their planes have pontoons and they can land on English Bay. Longer if they have to land at the old Richmond airport. I am fairly sure they have pontoons, though. In which case, we can have another regiment of Snows to help us within two hours, as long as we can give them Emily Thompson when they arrive.”
“What will we do?” Huang Ti said, wrapping his robe more tightly around his waist and glancing anxiously at the windows as if a barbarian incendiary bomb might come hurtling through them at any instant.
“What can we do? For the next two hours we wait. We try to hail Li Mei. We defend the barri—” The barricades. A sudden map of Chinatown jumped into Water Spider’s mind. “Pearl,” he whispered. His prostitute’s little apartment was two blocks beyond the barricades. Two blocks west, toward Downtown. It was a Sunken District, home only to whores and beggars and other misfits, and he—the colossal complacency of it! The thoughtless arrogance!—he had never thought to extend his defenses out that far.
And Pearl, his Pearl, Jen’s mother, was out there tonight, alone as he had left her—or perhaps with some unlucky other man—while monsters prowled through the streets and gunfire echoed all around. There would be no marksman to stop the barbarians from swarming into her apartment, if they chose.
The other Ministers were staring at him.
He found he was standing. “My apologies. I must go.”
“Minister!” said the Lidded Eye. “While this crisis continues, your duty is at your post!”
“Not so long as that chair is empty!” Water Spider shouted, pointing to the red throne at the head of the table. He found he was furious and he did not know why, which frightened and angered him more. “People, not positions, must hold our deepest loyalty. As long as the throne sits empty, I will not betray people for empty air.”
He strode from the chamber, and slammed the door behind him.
“Well, well,” Johnny Ma said thoughtfully. “Must remember not to give him any more dope.”
The Minister in Charge of Ministers made a long notation on her scroll.
“There is a touch of heaven on him,” Grace Shih, the Minister for Wellness, said. “I smelled it when he entered the room. A ghost, a god, a demon perhaps, has been with him.” Johnny Ma looked sharply at her. Her old black eyes were thoughtful.
Huang Ti grunted. “Blood will tell,” he said. “I knew there had to be a taint of the father in the son. Blood will tell.”
Water Spider was sitting at his desk some minutes later when Johnny Ma found him. “You don’t have to pretend you were working,” Johnny said.
Water Spider smiled faintly. “How did you know?”
“Hard to write with no ink on your brush.”
&nbs
p; Water Spider put the dry brush down. “True. So, how did you get stuck with the task of bearding me in my den? Lose a cast of dice?”
“I never lose at dice,” Johnny said. “It’s part of the portfolio.”
“Ah. True.”
Water Spider waited politely for Johnny to speak. He had no intention of admitting that he had rushed back to his offices so he could send Jen to rescue his prostitute. Jen and the Snow too, Heavens forgive him. At the time it had seemed like mercy, to give her something to do other than sit and brood over her slaughtered comrades.
What had come over him?
It wasn’t that the decision to rescue Pearl was so right or so wrong, but that he had lost all ability to tell which. He had never been one to crack under pressure, but now his judgment eluded him. It was all Water Spider could do to sit still and try not to show how badly he was adrift.
Johnny wandered to the sword shrine under the north-facing window and admired Water Spider’s ancient blade. “Actually, no one sent me. I came on my own.” His hand hovered over the hilt of the sword. “May I?”
“No.”
Johnny smiled and lifted his hands. “Not promiscuous, is she?”
“He. And, no.”
“Let me suggest that you keep the Old Man close.” Johnny dropped into an exquisite cherrywood chair. “You do realize you’re being worked, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Huang Ti is in the service of the Dragon.”
Water Spider drew in a long breath. “You know this?”
Johnny shrugged. “It is my instinct. And it was Chou Shou’s as well.”
“Ah.” It was the responsibility of Chou Shou, Minister for the East, to watch the Dragon, and deal with those humans who owed him their allegiance, or fell under his influence.
“And here we are, in a time of crisis that could have been avoided if Huang Ti had been willing to pay for destroying the barbarians entirely and razing Downtown. Instead, Huang Ti used the Snows to harry the Double Monkey’s people, my merchant friends. Let me tell you, they have not been at all pleased to have this plague of big, white, incorruptible tax-collectors visited upon them.” Johnny held Water Spider’s eye. “I can think of many traders, who deal in many strange devices, who will not be sorry to hear that the Southsiders have, ah, gone away.”
