by Beth Cato
A baby’s cry pierced the night. A woman sang, the melody of a lullaby clear even though the words weren’t in English. Speaking any Chinese dialect was punishable by death, as if that law mattered now. Being Chinese was punishable by death.
Men in dark clothes crouched on a balcony that looked to the north, toward downtown and the dock. A garage door cranked open in the building below. A team of men stood there, stripped down to pants. They grabbed hold of a beam and pulled, each man straining and groaning. Some sort of war machine wagon rolled into the open. Ingrid recognized a heavy gun barrel, like the sort shown in illustrations of the War Between the States. A man chanted to keep time as the team of men clutched the tongue of the wagon to inch it toward the wall.
Following the qilin’s vision, she led Cy down a block, then turned. Rain began again in earnest. The stench of water and rot carried on the wind; Elliott Bay was close by. Chickens scurried past. A shop window featured rows of herbs whose names were poorly translated into English words. Next door, an open entry revealed a room whose floor was packed with bodies. Ingrid feared they were dead but then a few of the figures shifted. They were sleeping, or trying to. She recalled what Lee had said—refugees from Portland, San Francisco, and other outlying towns had fled this way, too. Vancouver was located just north of the Canadian border and it had a large Chinatown; Britannia wasn’t at war with China, but the British didn’t welcome the Chinese or treat them well either.
It was all about hope. Walk far enough, maybe someone won’t try to kill you there.
Sleeping bodies lined a porch like sardines in a can. Rain dripped from the overhanging roof. Ingrid recognized the next building and walked faster. They rounded another corner and crossed a yard thick with rusted autocar parts, and at last she saw it.
The three-story building leaned inward as if it were hunkering down, drawing its walls closer to keep warm. No people slept on its porch. The shadows in the yard were deep, but couldn’t quite hide the cracked qilin beside the steps. Ingrid knelt before it and gripped its snout in a reverent request for luck.
She couldn’t count how many times she had done the same thing to the kirin statue in her childhood backyard. To think, it had been guarding the house all along. Maybe that’s why the assassination attempt on Mr. Sakaguchi had failed. The gunman would have been near the statue in their yard.
Ingrid looked up at the third-floor balcony. The structure seemed as if it might collapse beneath a pigeon’s weight, but she knew it provided the best access to Lee. Her bare fingers probed the filled kermanite in her right pocket and squeezed. The crystals dissolved to powder as heat coiled up her arm with a delicious shiver that made it oh so easy to dismiss the consequences that would come later.
“I’m ready,” Cy said. His face was grim, the rod telescoped in his grip.
“So am I.” She brought her hand to his cheek and her lips found his. It was a hungry, desperate kiss. A good-bye kiss.
With her excess power, she shoved him away, his boots leaving a sleek track in the mud. She willed the sylphs away with him. Cy’s mouth gaped in anger and dismay, as if he would yell, and then he vanished. Even though she was expecting it to happen, the immediacy of the illusion came as a shock.
“You’ll be safer out here. Hide and feed the sylphs. I’ll be back soon,” she whispered. Raindrops spattered her cheeks. She crouched and pushed off the muddy ground, her gaze on the balcony high above.
Chapter 19
It amazed Ingrid how long the seconds stretched as she sprang from the earth toward the rickety balcony on high. Dark thoughts galloped through her head: What the hell am I doing? Will that balcony even hold me? Someone can very well shoot me the instant I land!
She worried for Cy, too. He would be visible as the sylphs rested and ate. She needed to be fast for all their sakes.
Heat drained from her body as she flew up, forming a high arc, and then gravity returned. Ingrid pushed the frantic worries from her mind and fully focused again. Remembering how she softened her jump from the airship in Olema, she imagined a cushion beneath her feet. Gravity dragged her down, but in a kinder, gentler way, as if her feet impacted on a feather pillow instead of splintered floorboards. Her soles tapped down and she straightened, pleased.
That’s when the balcony groaned and shuddered. Wood crackled like a gunshot.
She dove for the door. A rusted lock secured the handle to a bar in the doorframe. She shoved power inside the mechanism. The entire metal unit crumbled beneath her touch, the handle draping loosely against her hand. She pushed the door open and slipped inside.
Her skin still held a mild fever, though the magnificent leap had taken a lot out of her. Well, that’s why she had more kermanite.
Water dribbled somewhere nearby. She remained utterly quiet except for the mad rampage of her heartbeat. The balcony continued to tenaciously cling to the building—thank God for that. The last thing she needed was to attract attention to the yard where Cy was hiding.
The building creaked but she didn’t hear any voices or footsteps racing her way. Maybe it was abandoned, except as a prison for Lee.
Or maybe this was a trap.
That made her pause. A trap for her? No, it couldn’t be. No one in Chinatown except Lee knew the truth about her power. Would the qilin, peace-loving creature that it was, direct her into a trap? How did that fit into its comparison of fate to a turbulent river?
Whatever the case, she was here, and she didn’t intend to leave alone.
Ingrid walked with slow care, wincing at every gripe of the floor and thud of her boots. The place had almost no furniture, and what existed was battered and broken and chewed on. Something scuffled in the darkness, and then a rat the size of her forearm darted across the floor. She shuddered.
The vision the qilin had given her remained clear in her mind, as if she were holding a map of the building in her hand. She slipped down the hallway and past a staircase. A painting of a Porterman airship hung crooked on the wall, as if the airship would dive nose-first into the floor. She passed through another room. Filthy blankets lay in heaps on the dark-speckled floor, a strong contrast to the opulent yet degraded details of the architecture: the haphazard wainscoting, the crackled crown molding, and the artful ceiling tiles blotched in gray. Everything stank of dank rot, and Ingrid had a strong desire to escape the place and somehow scour her lungs clean. She continued, step-by-step, her sense of unease increasing.
This place had been a glorious mansion before the dynamics of the city had shifted. Now it was more like a crypt, a building so decrepit that even the most desperate people didn’t take refuge beneath its roof.
Through the next doorway, she could see Lee.
He looked as he had in the vision, his body bowed forward with his hands secured behind the chair. His shaggy black hair draped over his face in a short veil. Ingrid hesitated in the doorway. This was too easy. Chinese were known for setting traps for Unified Pacific soldiers, but she had no clear idea what to look for here. Cy would have known. She peered to either side of the door. She didn’t see beams of light that might set off an alarm or cause an explosion if the light was blocked. The patchy red carpet, like mange on a feral dog, showed the splintered wooden floor below. Rivulets of water trickled down the wall behind Lee, the rotten wallpaper curling to the floor in sodden sheets.
“Lee,” she hissed. His head bobbed like a balloon thrust into water. “Lee!” His head almost lifted high enough to see her. “Lee! It’s me! I’m here.”
His head jerked up. His cheeks were purple and rounded, his eyes almost squinted shut against the swelling. A gash across his hairline left dried drips of blood down to his eyebrows. The crisp white shirt he’d worn the day before had turned almost as gray and stained as the wallpaper. The knees of his dungarees were brown with grime, his shoes and socks gone.
“Ingrid?” The word was fat and puffy through his swollen lips.
She curved her hands into fists and resisted the urge to run to him. �
�I’m here, Lee. Oh God. What happened?”
“I decided I wanted a new look. What do you think?” The words were slurred.
“I think I want to shake some sense into your bones then hug everything into place again. Who did this to you?”
He squinted and twitched against his restraints. “Another tong grabbed me. They’ve never made a move against Wui Seng before, but one of their men is really hurt, so they were desperate. They saw me and thought Uncle Moon must be close by, and didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t know where Uncle was. Not then. My captors connected with him . . . um, a few hours ago. I think.” He squinted at the boarded-up window. “Their meeting’s supposed to be tonight in an herb shop. He’ll heal that man and take me in exchange. What time is it now?”
If Lee was traded to his uncle, as this tong planned, Ingrid could use the sylphs to follow along. Maybe Uncle Moon would lead her to Mr. Sakaguchi. But how long would that take? How long did she dare wait? The painted words on her body must be wearing away.
She couldn’t wait. Not even if it meant sacrificing Ojisan. God, it hurt to even think that.
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice thick. “It’s late. Blum is in Seattle and about to lead an attack on Chinatown. The whole city is holding its breath in wait.”
“That ambassador’s here?” He sat up straight with a shudder and moan. “You need to go, Ing. You can’t be here. If she gets you—”
“Damn it, Lee, I’m already here. Is it safe to walk across the floor to you?”
His attempt to laugh ended in a painful wheeze. “I don’t know. My initial memories of this place are a little blurry.” He studied the floor, his arms straining from side to side. “Hard to see with my eyes like this.”
“Leave it to me. What should I look for?”
“Shallow lumps in the carpet. Could be alarms or devices that could shock you. If you walk slowly, you should be okay.”
“Famous last words.” She knelt down to get an eye-level view of the carpet. Sure enough, she did spy some bumps in Lee’s vicinity. She stood again, lips pursed. She could play it safe and draw on her power to float across the floor, but that might be better to do when she crossed again with Lee. She didn’t need to drain herself unnecessarily.
“You don’t have to do this, Ing. Really. It’s okay to leave me.” Lee’s tender smile was distorted by his swelled cheeks.
“You know I won’t leave you.”
“Yeah. You’re stupidly stubborn like that sometimes.”
“Sometimes,” she scoffed, and gently stepped into the room.
“How’s your day gone? Miss me?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, pretty normal. Cy found out his father is presumed dead. Almost the entire Cascadian Earth Wardens Auxiliary was slaughtered by Russian sailors angry at the Baranov gold rush fuss, and we had to rescue the apprentices they kidnapped.” She took a few more careful steps. “That’s when Blum showed up with a lot of soldiers. It turns out she can track me somehow—she can sense me from hundreds of miles away. I only escaped her because I made friends with a hive of Sierran sylphs. They made me invisible. That’s how we made it into Chinatown, too.”
“We? Who else is here?”
“Cy. He’s in the backyard.” She stooped again to check the area ahead. It was hard to see in the bleary light, but she did note a few protrusions in the patchy carpet. She altered her path to the right.
“Damn.” He sighed. “Is that all I missed?”
“No. The qilin spoke to me. It gave me a sort of vision of this place where you were captive, and told me that I needed to rescue you if there was to be any chance for peace.”
Lee went very still. “The qilin spoke to you?”
“Yes. I . . . I don’t even know what to think of it.”
“You found the guandao, too, Ing.” His voice was soft. “That has to mean something.”
Yes, it meant that the qilin had conscripted her to help Lee stay alive so that he could utilize the Crescent Blade in proper time—something Ingrid would have gladly done without all of this manipulation.
She knelt beside Lee’s chair. “I won’t go into all the details now, but you need to know the qilin really is drawn to the places it’s called to guard. This building has a broken qilin statue in the backyard.”
“Oh. Oh! Did the qilin speak to you on—”
“The Palmetto Bug, yes. Cy pointed out the carving you made.”
“I just . . . felt like it needed to be there.” Lee bowed his head and murmured something in Chinese. By his tone, it sounded like a prayer.
His injuries looked even more horrible up close. Anger brought a flare of power to her skin. She followed the line of his arms to where his wrists were shackled together in the darkness behind the chair.
“Lee. There are wires here. Something is attached to the underside of your seat.”
“Damn. What does it look like?”
“A box about the size of two decks of cards side by side.” She stared at the contraption in dismay. “What could it do?”
“Blow us up. Or if we’re lucky, it’s only an alarm. What color are the wires?”
“Black. I can’t even count how many there are in the darkness. What can I do? And don’t you dare tell me to leave you.”
“You know if you dare me, I’ll—”
A voice cried out in Chinese. Ingrid glanced up. A man stood in the doorway, a gun brandished. Lee yelled something back at him as Ingrid called up her power to form a bubble.
The gun fired.
Lee screeched as the bullet struck with a fleshy thump just as Ingrid raised her hand. A second bullet pinged off the protective bubble and cracked into a wall. The man yelled, his voice echoing through the massive house.
“Lee? Lee!” Ingrid leaned forward on her knees. Lee had collapsed over his thighs. She pulled him back by the shoulder far enough to see the expanding crimson across his belly.
A gut wound. Lee was shot, he was shot, he was shot. This couldn’t happen, this couldn’t be right. Lee couldn’t die, not here, not now, not because she had been too sluggish to shield him in time.
The man screeched, and more voices called throughout the building. Ingrid had no time to deal with them. In her mind, she kept the bubble formed around herself and Lee, and she pulled her arm down. Another bullet ricocheted away, proof that the shield was holding. She grabbed the side and back of the chair, and calling on her strength, she yanked. The metal bolts snapped away from the aged wood.
With Lee and the chair in her arms, she ran for the window. Something clicked underfoot; a beeping alarm roared in her wake. The bubble bludgeoned through the outer wall with the crunch of wood and clatter of shattering glass, and then they were airborne and sailing from the third story.
The world blurred beneath them, but all too clearly Ingrid saw the Behemoth-class airship above, a rising sun-and-stars upon the side. That distinct, horrible smell flared in her nostrils again. Ambassador Blum was aboard and all too near.
Chapter 20
The attack on Chinatown. Ambassador Blum. Lee, bleeding.
Gravity.
Ingrid pushed power through her feet as the ground rapidly neared. She softened their descent, just barely, the impact jarring through both of her feet and sending out a gush of mud. Yells rang out from above. So much for a subtle exit.
“Ingrid!” Cy called from the deep shadows of the fence. “What the—”
“Lee’s been shot in the stomach. We have to get him to his uncle. The herb shop.” She glanced up to see if anyone was taking aim at her, and the evidence of what she’d done stole away her breath. She’d punched through the brittle wall as if it were tissue paper. Jagged edges marked a hole a solid seven feet in diameter, and she’d broken apart a chunk of the roof as well. Debris littered the yard. Good God, she could have killed Cy with shrapnel.
Her breath rattled. There was no time for doubts, no time for what-ifs. The screech of the alarm and men’s yells echoed through the decrepit m
ansion.
She let the bubble fall and focused to leap again, bounding from the small crater with the chair in her arms. She dashed toward the warm magical presence of the sylphs. They welcomed her with a happily buzzing chorus.
Cy’s eyes were wide, dim light reflecting on his pince-nez lenses. “Are you—”
“I’m fine.” She gestured to the sylphs. They rose in a fluttering mass, their perkiness evidence of a good meal and some rest. She asked for their aid again, and they were delighted to acquiesce. Their movements were a gray haze in the black night.
Cy reached to help with Lee’s chair but she moved past him. “No, come on!” She would have relinquished the burden if possible, but there was no time. Ingrid ran for the alley. Her muscles clenched as she fought the urge to convulsively shiver. Footsteps and yells carried across the yard and gained on them fast.
Ingrid motioned to Cy and they stopped beside a fence. She forced her ragged breaths to be quiet and shallow just as three men tore past them, two toting rifles. More cries rang out around the block. Ingrid wasn’t the sole source of the hubbub; the UP airship hovered low overhead. Gunfire popped close by.
The attack was under way.
They remained quiet and still. Ingrid kept a wary eye out in case she needed to call up her shield again.
“Waste of bullets,” Cy murmured, panting softly as he glanced at the airship. “That envelope has enchantments to make it almost as impenetrable as orichalcum. At least it’s distracting our pursuers.” He leaned down. “Are you with us, Lee?”
“Kind of.” He barely squeezed out the words. “Hurts bad.”
“We’ll get you to Uncle Moon.” Ingrid reached for the chains at Lee’s back, and stopped at the sight of the black wires. “Cy, there’s a bomb or something attached to his cuffs. Can you—”
