Quaint walked over to join Cho-zen Li’s side. The sun was setting in the mountains, and rust-coloured banners streaked across the sky. The scene was staggeringly beautiful, but Quaint couldn’t take his eyes from Cho-zen Li to admire it.
‘Aren’t you going to even try to justify your actions?’
‘To you, Englishman? Why ever should I?’ asked the Chinaman. ‘I am as bereft of a conscience as I am a heartbeat. You saw what my body has become.’
‘Yes.’ Quaint could still taste the rotten flesh in his mouth. ‘I don’t know what you’re made of, Cho-zen Li… but I know what you are. I’ve met dozens of people like you in the past. People with too much power exerting their will over innocent people. But the thing about most megalomaniacs is that when it all boils down to it, they’re just ordinary run of the mill maniacs.’
Cho-zen Li turned to face him. ‘Do I look ordinary to you?’
‘Not at all,’ said Quaint, ‘which is why I’m so keen on finding out what makes you tick. Shall we begin with the bacterium? You’ve used it twice now. Once with Polly North, and once on Aloysius Bedford. You tried to use him to assassinate the greatest intellects of the British Empire, remember?’
‘Ah, yes,’ Cho-zen Li nodded. ‘I soon realised that intellect and the British scientific community do not walk hand in hand. All their pomposity! Pioneers of the brand new world, indeed. The Industrial Revolution was no such thing! Revolutions are bloody things. Commanded by the downtrodden, instigated by the people – not fuelled by filling the pockets of the aristocracy!’
Quaint smiled to himself, seeing the first chink in Cho-zen Li’s armour. It was the first time that the warlord had exhibited any sort of emotion, and that might just be something that he could make use of. If a battle against the body was pointless, perhaps he would do better in a battle of the mind.
‘You speak about the people being downtrodden,’ Quaint said, ‘and yet you’ve got your own little workforce of slaves, I see.’
‘I prefer to think of them as unwilling volunteers,’ said Cho-zen Li. ‘A man in my position has many needs, and I cannot possibly fulfil them on my own. My slaves, as you call them, work not just for me, but to restore China’s glory.’
‘You call yourself a man?’ laughed Quaint. ‘You’re nothing more than a walking corpse, more dead than alive!’
Cho-zen Li placed his enormous arm around Quaint’s shoulder, pulling the conjuror towards him in an awkward embrace. ‘Let me remind you that this is supposed to be a genial conversation, Cornelius… there is no need to be insulting.’
‘So what did Queen Victoria do to upset you? Or did you just pick her name out of a hat on a whim?’ enquired Quaint, prising himself from Cho-zen Li’s grasp.
‘When you have lived as long as I have, you learn never to obey your whims. No… Victoria was definitely a deliberate target. I needed to make an example out of her. She deserved my revenge, the revenge that China’s government was too spineless to exact!’
‘Revenge for what?’ pressed Quaint.
‘Do you recall the Opium War that blighted my country?’ Cho-zen Li asked. ‘Your countrymen discovered the benefits of trading vast quantities of the poppy sap from India, and not content with blackening the souls of their own people, they decided to export it on a grand scale to China. Many of my people became addicted to the drug. It sapped their wills, made them easier to exploit, easier to control – which was advantageous when England set its sights on controlling Hong Kong’s trade routes!’
‘I remember the war,’ said Quaint. ‘When he was alive, my father used to own a shipping business, and I heard all about it. I can see how that would leave a bad taste in your mouth, but why hold the Queen responsible? She knew nothing of what was going on half a world away!’
‘I am Chinese!’ bellowed Cho-zen Li – jolting Quaint so much that he very nearly lost his footing on the palace’s outer wall. ‘I have not merely read of my country’s history, Cornelius – I have lived it! Even though it was many years ago to some, to me it feels like yesterday, a symptom of my unique situation. If I had been successful in killing your queen it might not have changed the past, but it would have made me feel better about the future. As events turned out, I need not have wasted my energy. Soon the foundations of your precious Empire will be rocked to their core. Another war is coming, Cornelius, and this time not only China will be drawn into the fray. Once it is done, Europe will never be the same again.’
‘You sound pretty pleased about that,’ said Quaint.
‘Far from it. Wars hold no interest for me, Cornelius. I like to win, and there are no winners in wars… only one side with fewer losers. I have lost too much already.’
‘You? What have you lost? Apart from your waistline, I mean.’
Quaint tensed, expecting a sharp response, or a curt remark, or even a swipe from the back of Cho-zen Li’s hand – but there was nothing. The warlord was silent. Quaint examined his face, his smooth, glistening complexion, his taut flesh, his long moustache that fell elegantly from the corners of his upper lip. He looked like a statue of some description, solid and immovable.
And then, the conjuror noticed something that made him revisit every single assumption that he had made about his enemy to date.
A single tear descended the Chinese warlord’s cheek.
A pocket of silence formed between them.
‘Do you believe in eternal life, Cornelius?’ asked Cho-zen Li, eventually.
Quaint puffed out his cheeks. ‘Actually I—’
‘Many see it as a dream, but it is far from that,’ continued Cho-zen Li. ‘I am cursed to live for ever, feeling the rot inside me grow with each passing decade.’ The warlord walked over to one of the stone columns of his palace chamber and placed his hand flat against it. ‘I watched them build this palace, you know. One stone at a time. I wish that I could say the memory was a distant blur, but I cannot. It is as fresh to me now as it was back then. I cannot forget, such is my pain… such is my curse.’
Quaint began to appreciate why the warlord had ostracised himself from the world, taking a piece of it for himself and claiming mastery over it. He was immortal; but he was also the eternal man, facing what he had become each day, feeling the rot grow.
‘You called me a maniac,’ said Cho-zen Li, ‘but my mind is always clear, always unmarred by decay.’
‘How did you…? What made you this way?’ asked Quaint.
‘I have access to certain elements that infuse me with life,’ replied Cho-zen Li. ‘Oil from a very rare plant, and as long as I remain infused with the oil, my body and mind will exist for ever… but the oil also preserves my memory so that I remember every day of my long life. I recall exactly what I have lost, and each day I try to reclaim it. Believe me… the ability to live for ever is not as wondrous as it seems.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Quaint, hungry for more information, for eternal life was a subject close to his heart. Even the pain of his broken arm was pushed into the recesses of his mind. Quaint suddenly cared little for his motives for coming to China. In that fleeting moment upon seeing the warlord’s tear, he saw an eternal life’s worth of pain, and that was dangerous territory. What if he felt empathy for the warlord, what then? How could he possibly complete his objective. ‘This loss that you suffered… I take it that it’s a painful one?’
‘Are not all memories that linger longest as such?’ replied Cho-zen Li. ‘I may sidestep time but I cannot turn it back… much I would want to. My past is replete with failures, and it seems that I am destined to destroy anything that I touch. Yet it was not always this way. Once I was a man of passion… tenderness… of love.’
‘So what changed?’ asked Quaint, warily. ‘What happened to turn you from the man you were into the man you are?’
‘My wife,’ Cho-zen Li replied. ‘I was already a man of great power when we met. Ruling my kingdom from this mountain, capable of instilling fear into any that opposed me. But Meng Po made me feel… m
ade me love. When she died, I forsook my humanity. These stone pillars became my prison.’
‘I once lost someone that I loved,’ said Quaint, revealing the fact awkwardly. ‘I sometimes think there’s little chance of me feeling the same way about anyone else. Especially at my age. But if I were to deny myself the capacity for love, then what’s the point of living? I might just as well have died myself. In time, all things heal, Cho-zen Li. If only you allowed yourself to grieve, maybe then you can learn to forget your pain. Or at least live with it, as I have.’
‘Were you not listening to me?’ roared Cho-zen Li, smashing his fist into the stone column. ‘I cannot grieve! I cannot forget! My curse forbids it! Do you not think that I want to? Each day I am reminded of her death, and each day I take another step further away from her. Meng Po always wished the best for China, and I was prepared to move heaven and earth to grant that wish for her.’
‘How did she die… if you don’t mind me asking?’ asked Quaint.
‘There was a fire. The eastern wing of the palace was practically destroyed.’
‘The scorched walls I saw on my way in.’
Cho-zen Li opened his mouth to speak, but then suddenly doubled over. Quaint went to offer him aid, but whatever pain afflicted the warlord, it seemed to pass quickly. Regaining his composure, Cho-zen Li smeared his sleeve across his mouth. ‘It… it was decades ago by your standards, yet to me it was yesterday. I smelled the smoke, and I rushed as fast as I could to find my beloved. By the time I got there she was dead… nothing but a charred, emaciated collection of bones.’
Quaint was lost for words – which was a first.
‘I mourn that day, and have done for more years than I can remember,’ continued Cho-zen Li. ‘Every year, on the anniversary of the fire, that day takes on a different feel. The sun is a little paler, the air a little harsher, and the birdsong is off-key. As if the world has gone wrong. Sometimes I swear I can still smell the smoke.’
Quaint lowered his head. It seemed the appropriate response. Agonisingly, he could empathise – as much as it pained him to admit it. He felt the exact same feelings on the anniversary of his wife’s death. He blinked away his thoughts. He could not afford to feel sympathy for Cho-zen Li – any emotion at all come to that. So why did he feel compelled to share his innermost thoughts? Things that he had not shared with anyone, not even Madame Destine.
How had this got so complicated?
The All-Knowing One had prophesised that it was his destiny to confront Cho-zen Li. Perhaps the old man had been right, but not in the way that Quaint had thought. What if the confrontation was less about their links to immortality, and more about how alike they were as mortals? That put a brand new spin on everything.
‘I still think about Margarite on the day of her death,’ he said, unable to hold his tongue any longer. ‘Even now, sometimes at night I’m almost too scared to close my eyes in case I open them in the morning and can’t remember her face.’
‘I envy you,’ said Cho-zen Li. ‘Seeing Meng Po each day only makes our separation worse… but it is just not the same from behind the glass.’
Quaint frowned. ‘Did you say glass?’
Chapter XXXIV
The Mouth of the Mine
Makoi slashed his sword into the chest of one of Cho-zen Li’s soldiers, shattering the armour as if it was brittle clay. Blood sprayed into the air, splattering against the outlaw’s mask. His men surged deeper into the mine, trying to force back the brigade of soldiers, denying them a foothold. Within the confined tunnels their tactics were working, but the battle was bloody. Makoi’s men had already freed many of the slaves from the mine. Bolstering the attack, some of them took up arms and joined the fray. Although none were skilled warriors, their added numbers were greeted with relief. The odds were still uneven, and many guards still stood in their way.
Butter skipped nimbly on his toes, lunging into bodies with a studded iron mace. His face was alight, his eyes keen. Prometheus watched him pound his mace into a soldier’s back, and the man went down.
‘Good shot, Butter!’
‘Thank you, Prometheus,’ the Inuit replied. ‘These evildoers will not triumph.’
Prometheus had never seen Butter this fierce – yet to Butter, he was simply fighting on the right side of good versus evil, either naive or ignorant of the danger. Whatever the reason, he fought on, the thought of injury never once gracing his mind. Thrashing his elbows as he ran through the fray of battle, Yin leapt to Prometheus’s side.
‘How are we doing?’
‘Hard to tell, lad.’ Prometheus pointed to the mass of armoured soldiers piled into the cramped tunnels. ‘As soon as we take down one of them, ten more leap in to replace him. We’ve got them blocked into the tunnels, but the problem is, now we’ve got them penned in, it’s going to be a nightmare getting into the palace.’
Makoi rushed over to join the small group of circus performers. ‘Unless we can break through their ranks, we are only delaying the inevitable. Cho-zen Li sends his brigades out on daily patrols of the perimeter and if they turn up, we will be trapped between a rock and a hard place! We need someone to guard the mine’s entrance.’
‘You mean… us?’ asked Yin.
‘No offence, but you are circus performers, not warriors. My band is used to spilling blood – you are not. Already you three have been forced to take many lives, but I can ask it of you no longer.’ Makoi nodded at Prometheus. ‘Do you think your Goliath will be able to follow those orders?’
‘Oh, he’ll be fine,’ said Yin, thumbing over his shoulder. ‘It’s Butter you want to watch out for. He hates missing out on a good fight.’
‘Tell him that if he is really lucky a returning patrol will show up and then he will have one,’ said Makoi. ‘That may console his thirst for battle.’
‘I’ll try,’ sighed Yin. ‘But it’s not the battle he’s worried about, it’s letting people down. Even if he’s going up against a platoon of soldiers and outnumbered five to one, as long as he’s pulling his weight, Butter is happy. He’s what you might call unique in that regard.’
Makoi slapped his hand on the acrobat’s shoulder. ‘In that case, you are lucky to have him. Make sure you look after him.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Yin said. ‘Butter’s got Prometheus to watch his back, and I can’t think of anyone that I would rather have.’
Moments later, with the sounds of battle in the distance, Yin and Butter stood idle at the mouth of the mine, their blood-splattered weapons silent and still. Cho-zen Li’s soldiers were occupied with the ensuing skirmish inside the mine and Butter looked positively glum because of it.
‘I wish the boss is here,’ the Inuit grumbled. ‘Fighting not much fun without him.’
‘I’m sure he’d say the same about you, Butter,’ grinned Yin. ‘But there’s more to this mission than fighting. We still haven’t found Ruby or Yang. Where can they be?’
Prometheus stepped into view from the inside of the mine, dragging the bodies of three soldiers with him. He dropped them onto the ground at Yin and Butter’s feet.
‘What size are you, lad?’ he asked Butter.
‘Short.’
‘I meant your clothes. What size chest are you?’
‘Small.’
‘Good enough,’ said Prometheus. ‘You can take the one on the left.’
‘You have bright idea?’ Butter asked, keenly.
‘Well… as Cornelius would say, there’re many different types of ideas, but seldom few are ever all that bright. I’m thinking that if we disguise ourselves as soldiers, if anyone comes sniffing about, it might just throw them off the scent.’
Butter looked down at the soldiers’ bodies. ‘Prometheus, it is true that I am very small and you are very big. We will not look convincing, I think.’
‘Up close, maybe,’ said Prometheus. ‘We only have to look convincing from afar.’
Yin stroked his chin, warily. ‘It’s risky, but at least I’d feel a bit safer with
the armour on than not.’
‘Then all agreed,’ said Butter. ‘I hope this idea is one of bright ones.’
‘Aye, lad,’ grinned Prometheus. ‘That makes two of us.’
Within minutes, the three circus performers were clad in the armour of Cho-zen Li’s soldiers. Unfortunately, Yin’s was the only armour that fit. For the giant and the Inuit, it was not so snug.
‘How do I look?’ Prometheus asked the acrobat.
‘How shall I put this?’ Yin looked at the gaping expanse in the middle where the strongman’s armour refused to meet, and the helmet that was clearly a couple of sizes too small for his bald head. ‘Maybe if you stand at the back no one will notice.’
‘And what of I, Yin?’ asked Butter. ‘Do I pass the mustard?’
Yin inspected the diminutive Inuit cautiously. The helmet’s peak covered his eyes completely, and the armour was easily several sizes too big, practically falling off his slight shoulders. ‘Maybe you should stand at the back too. Neither of you would fool a blind man.’
‘We soon to put to test,’ said Butter, cupping a hand to his ear. ‘Sounds come.’
There was a low rumbling about the air, as a brigade of soldiers on horseback and riding one-man chariots streaked into the clearing from the eastern road. Luckily, the dust kicked up by the horses’ hooves masked the circus trio from close inspection, but the soldiers were getting closer by the second.
A lump rose in Yin’s throat. ‘This is not good.’
‘You took my words right from my mouth,’ gulped Butter.
‘You said you didn’t want to miss the fight, lad?’ said Prometheus, as he drew his sword. ‘This might be your lucky day.’
Prometheus, Butter and Yin formed a pyramid, bracing themselves for the attack.
‘Yin, you’ve got the fastest legs!’ yelled Prometheus. ‘Get inside after Makoi’s men! Tell ’em we’ve got company!’
The Lazarus Curse Page 18
