by K. T. Tomb
As she turned toward the jaingshi, she leapt into the air and kicked out toward the head of the nearest one. To her delightful surprise, the head of the sickening creature disintegrated beneath her blow and its body fell to the ground before shriveling into dust. The Duke was right, she told herself. She advanced through the mass of oncoming jaingshi kicking out right and left as fast as she was able. Though there seemed to be no end to their advance, they were having absolutely no effect upon her and she was eliminating them by the dozens.
When the last of the advancing jaingshi had finally fallen, she looked back toward the rats, but they were no longer there. It was in that very same moment that she felt the heavy blow of some creature who had flown up behind her and struck her in the middle of her back. She fell forward into a tuck, rolled out of it and leapt into the air to deliver a kick to the flying creature. Flying jaingshi? The Duke had warned her about those MIs as well. What had he told her? She thought she remembered him saying that they were a much greater challenge for MIs of her type, but that she could still defeat them. Armed with that confidence booster, she attacked the first creature that came at her, quickly eliminating it with a well-placed blow to the chest.
I’ve got to get to Andrik, she told herself as she fought with all of her rage against the hordes of flying jaingshi that were attacking her. They were landing some solid blows, dealing out some deep flesh wounds and tiring her, but she was doing a great deal more damage to them every time she delivered a blow. She considered transforming and escaping, but she wasn’t sure how any of her other forms might hold up against their attack. She determined that her best choice was to continue fighting them until they, like their hopping cousins, were eliminated.
Nora fought with impressive fury as each wave of the attacking jaingshi increased in speed and number. The Duke had been right about them being more difficult to defeat and she was eliminating them by the dozens as well, but they began to wear her down more and more with even greater numbers and with increasing frequency. She took a number of very heavy blows that sent her tumbling, but she recovered from the majority of them and struck back over and over again. Finally, however, their numbers and the speed of their attack was too much for her to fend off. She fell to the ground after receiving another heavy blow, but simply could not rise up as several of the creatures landed on her and pinned her down.
The flying jaingshi bound her hands and feet with cords containing silver threads to prevent her from being able to break them or transform into a creature which might escape them. With her safely secured, a dozen of them surrounded her took a hold of her and as a unit lifted her into the black sky above. I never made it to Andrik, was the only thought in her head. She’d not been able to inform him of what they might be dealing with. As it turned out, she also hadn’t been able to warn him. It was quite obvious that someone knew of their meeting and had sent the jaingshi to attack her. Would they attack him as well?
Where are they taking me? she asked herself, as she watched the Southern coast of China pass by beneath her. They hadn’t passed over Shanghai, so it was certain that they were carrying her toward the south. Zhejiang or Fujian, she told herself, the MI strongholds Liu told me about. Why had they captured her? What were their intentions for her? How had they known to send such a heavy force?
“Han Ba,” she answered herself in a whispered hiss.
Somehow, the very same leader in the ranks of the Heavenly Kingdom, which Liu had told her about, had found out about her and sent her minions to capture her. They must have been watching her all along, though she had no idea when she had exposed herself as… The answer came to her suddenly. They had seen her transform when she’d last met with Andrik and that meant that they might know about Andrik as well.
Oh God! I wish I had been able to warn him.
Chapter Twelve
His meeting with Nora had passed more than a quarter of an hour before, but she’d not appeared before him in any form.
The protocol for a situation in which their meeting had been compromised, was to remain in one of their alternate forms, seek out the other and then disappear. The safest of the forms would have been the rat or the moth in the setting, but Andrik had seen no moth in the time that he’d been waiting. I’ve seen no rat either, he told himself, making an out of place jest, given the circumstances.
He lingered a few minutes more, though he had already broken the rules. Too much time in a meeting location was to be avoided, even when information was being passed. He had already gone well beyond the time limit. But he couldn’t allow himself to leave until he was fairly certain that the reason that neither Nora nor one of her forms had met him was because she was unable to do so. There was a protocol for that possibility as well.
As difficult as it was, Andrik forced himself to leave the place where he and Nora had arranged to meet. He made absolutely certain that he was not being observed and found a secure location to transform into an owl. The owl had the best eyesight and was able to obtain a much broader view of the world below. The protocol was three passes around the area. Andrik completed the three passes without seeing anything out of the ordinary and was considering a fourth, but knew that he was risking a great deal by lingering any longer. In spite of his reservations, he returned to where he was staying among the residents at the British concession in Shanghai.
A second night and a third night were required before he was able to report the problem to MI-6. The major problem he faced was that, though British companies were intent on the telegraph lines linking the realm with Her Majesty’s territories in India, the war in Crimea had delayed the building of those lines. The nearest telegraph was in Bucharest, which was 5,000 miles away. It would take him a week to fly to Bucharest, send a telegraph, wait for a response, and then return to Shanghai. In that amount of time, whatever trouble was keeping Nora from being able to meet with him would have multiplied. I’ll have to find her on my own.
To take such a matter into his own hands was well beyond protocol, but he was compelled to go against it, because… well, because he couldn’t live with himself if something happened to her and she never returned. The most logical place to start searching for her was where he assumed she had last been; the palace in Shanghai. As he made that final pass on the third night, he turned toward the palace, landing on the ridge of its roof before transforming into a moth, which was the most likely means of being able to enter the palace and Liu Lichuan’s bedchamber.
Having flown through an open window, Andrik fluttered down the hallways seeking some sign that would indicate which chamber the leader of the SSS would be occupying. The answer came some minutes later as he took note of the higher concentration of sentries near a certain room. He lighted on a lantern near the doorway and considered his options. Breaking down the door, like he had done when they captured Xi Chen was a bad idea when it came to stealth. Rats and bats were likely not prevalent in the palace and he would be noticed quickly in those forms. How observant was the sentry beside the door? Would he notice a moth landing on the floor and squeezing through the crack underneath? If he did, then Andrik might be crushed by a shoe. The idea didn’t appeal to him, but there seemed like no other way to quietly gain entrance into the chamber.
Here goes nothing, he told himself as he fluttered toward the door at a low enough angle that he would land only inches from the crack between it and the floor. The moment he was on the floor, he could see that the crack was much wider than it had appeared from his other perspective. He scurried through the crack and into the chamber. Once inside, Andrik surveyed the room, making certain that he was inside the chamber of Liu Lichuan.
His quick survey told him that he was in the right room, so he fluttered over to the large bed. The form of the man in the bed was, no doubt, Liu Lichuan. His heart skipped a beat when he noticed an obviously feminine form beneath the silk sheet beside him. Oh God, I hope that’s not Nora. In spite of the fact that he had so firmly asserted his trust for her and was so certain t
hat she would never betray Her Majesty and commit treason, he feared that the form beneath the silk sheet was, indeed, his MI colleague.
Before he could even consider carrying out the purpose of his visit with Liu Lichuan, Andrik had to be certain that Nora was not lying in the bed beside the SSS leader. He fluttered to the edge of the silk sheet close to the top and lighted as softly as he could. There was a tiny sliver of dim light near the sheet’s edge where he hoped to view a few strands of hair. Would they be the tone of brilliant copper? He examined them closely and then felt relief flood over him as he noted that they were black as pitch.
Andrik fluttered to the other side of the bed, lighted upon the sheet beside the sleeping Liu Lichuan, and then transformed into his natural MI form.
The startled look in Liu Lichuan’s eyes as he rose up and looked directly into Andrik’s eyes was beyond satisfying to Andrik, perhaps because Andrik knew what had transpired between the man and Nora, and he was a bit jealous. The fluorescing of his eyes stunned Lichuan and prevented him from calling out while Andrik placed a mental suggestion in his mind.
“You will not cry out. I am no threat to you.”
“What do you want?” Lichuan asked. “How did you get in here?”
“How I gained access to your bedchamber is something of a secret,” Andrik replied. “As to what I want, well, that is not a secret and it is something quite simple. Honesty in the matter will go far with you. Do you understand?”
“Do you understand that I have sentries who can rush in here and have your head removed from your shoulders within minutes if I cry out?” Lichuan responded.
“I am aware of that and I am not threatened by the prospect in the least.”
“You are quite confident.”
“I believe that the matter we are to discuss is of great interest to the both of us.”
“Then name that subject.”
“I want to know what has become of Nora Kelly,” Andrik asked.
“I would like answers to the very same question,” Liu Lichuan responded.
Chapter Thirteen
“If you will permit me?” Liu Lichuan indicated the still sleeping form of the woman in the bed beside him. “I can have her removed.”
“There’s no need,” Andrik responded. “If she awakens, then I will deal with her.”
“A bit distasteful, don’t you think?”
Knowing what Lichuan was referring to, Andrik smiled. “I won’t harm her in the least, only make her unable to remember anything she has seen or heard.”
“Then you are a demon or a witch?” Lichuan asked.
Andrik broadened his smile to reveal his extra-long cuspids.
Lichuan allowed a soft groan to escape his lips.
“I have no interest in harming you,” Andrik assured him.
“What interest do you have in Nora?” Lichuan asked.
“Nora and I are partners,” Andrik began. There was no point in concealing their true identities any longer. If he was going to get the information he needed to find Nora, then he would need the confidence of Liu Lichuan to do so. He could always remove any memory of their meeting later. “We work for an agency under the authority of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. We have been assigned with the task of assessing the strength of the Heavenly Kingdom in general and the Small Sword Society in specific.”
“Nora is a spy?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s a…” Lichuan couldn’t bring himself to name the mythical undead immortal. “She’s like you?”
“I transformed her and trained her, in accordance with her own choice, of course. I’m not a monster.”
“She infiltrated the SSS and seduced me in order to—”
“To carry out her duties to the realm,” Andrik interrupted. “None of that is important at this point. What I need to know is whether or not you might know her whereabouts, what might have happened to her, or who might have captured her.”
“One of your kind can be captured?”
“It is quite difficult, but not impossible.”
“Not by a mere mortal, though, right?”
“It can be accomplished by a very knowledgeable mortal, yes, but it is quite unusual. Listen, I am not here to discuss vampire lore with you. I am here to find some indication of what might have happened to my partner. Tell the last time you saw her. Tell me the last thing you discussed. Tell me anything and everything that might be related to her disappearance.”
“I last saw her lying much like this one beneath the silk sheets of this very bed.”
The image was not one that Andrik wanted to have enter his mind, but he pushed aside the rising jealousy, knowing that what Nora did for Her Majesty was a very important part of their craft.
“What day was this? Or night, perhaps?”
“It was morning, actually. Our nighttime play had been quite vigorous for her, I suspect, and she had slept in. This was four mornings past.”
Four mornings past would have been the morning before she was supposed to meet me.
“And you did not see her throughout the day, four mornings past?”
“I was quite busy that day and did not return to my chamber until well after dark.”
“Could she have gone somewhere on her own, to inspect something, investigate something, gone sightseeing?” Andrik asked.
“She was free to move about as she liked,” Lichuan responded. “She might have gone anywhere.”
“Think back over your last few conversations with her. What did you talk about? Was she particularly interested in any one subject? Did she ask a lot of questions about someone or something?”
Lichuan’s face twisted into a mess of ugly wrinkles, as he ran back through their most recent conversations.
Seeing him in that moment, Andrik realized that there was no way that Nora could have been attracted to the man, but performed her duty just the same. No doubt, her former profession had steeled her against all feelings while doing her duty. Had she steeled herself when she’d been with him as well? Focus on the mission, he warned himself.
“Our discussion, several nights past had been about Fujian and Guangdong,” he smiled slightly. “She had assumed that those were names of persons who headed factions inside the Society, but I explained to her that they were actually the names of provinces from which many of our members originated.”
Andrik listened carefully, knowing the motivation behind the discussion Liu Lichuan was telling him about. His mind was attempting to skip ahead and determine what might have led to her disappearance or capture.
“Nora was concerned for my safety and wanted to know the motivation behind the development of the various factions,” he said, and then suddenly realized that his safety hadn’t been her motivation after all. “At least that is what she told me in order to convince me to talk.”
Lichuan placed his face in his hands as he realized that he had been infiltrated and had given out information concerning the Heavenly Kingdom and the Small Sword Society to a foreign agent. What would the consequences of his actions be? He had betrayed Hong and the rebellion.
“Look, Liu,” Andrik began in a soft tone, knowing that the man had just realized what he’d done by revealing information to Nora. “The information we are gathering is to determine the legitimacy of the rebellion and its strength. Her Majesty is committed to neutrality and has no intention of intervening on either side of the rebellion. Her interests, of course, lie in maintaining the rights of the Nanking Treaty. The occupation of Shanghai and other ports where Her Majesty maintains concessions has caused some concerns. Part of her motivation is to see if any threats toward her citizens and interests are imminent. There is, of course, the possibility that Her Majesty might be interested in supporting the Heavenly Kingdom as well. The gathering of intelligence often works out to be a benefit.”
If Andrik was a mere mortal, who did not have the power to erase the memory of Lichuan, all of what he had said would have been considered treason. Revealing wha
t he had would cause Lichuan to be a bit more cooperative.
“There was something that came up during our last discussion that might have some bearing on what has happened to Nora.”
“Tell me,” Andrik urged.
“I told her that there was a certain individual associated with the Heavenly Kingdom who is suspected of being immortal dead in the province of Zhejiang. Nora was very interested in hearing about her. I understand why now, but I did not know then what I know now.”
“Is it possible that this…” Andrik paused a moment. “By the way, we prefer to be called mortal/immortal or MI, if you like.”
Lichuan nodded.
“Is it possible that this MI has infiltrated your organization as well? Perhaps this MI has captured her.”
“It is my suspicion that she had something to do with the elimination of Yang from Hong’s organization and it could be that she intends the same for me,” Lichuan responded.
“In that case,” Andrik responded, “it might be quite beneficial if we became very good friends.”
“I agree.”
“We will talk more,” Andrik said. He fluoresced his eyes, sent a mental suggestion that erased what he had told him about Her Majesty’s interests and established that they were strong allies. He started to rise up and leave, but considered the sleeping woman beside Liu, who had not stirred the entire time. Just in case she had been awake and listening, he quickly snatched back the silk sheet, drew her startled eyes to his and completely erased any memory of his voice or his appearing there. With that bit of housekeeping taken care of, he transformed into a moth and made his retreat. He was long gone from the palace in Shanghai before Lichuan or the woman in his bed came out of their trance.
