“Is Lord Ryuunosuke a vampire of some kind?”
Percy said, “That seems unlikely, I’m thinking shifter. Snake or something, with that scaled armour.”
The Wallflower nodded. “Yes, close enough. My research suggests, uh, dragon.” She sounded unhappy to admit it. Probably because the very idea was something the English would find absurd. Because it was absurd – fantastical and mythological.
Which meant it was probably true.
“Oh dear,” said Arsenic, “that’s going to upset people.” Poor Percy would have a devil of a time writing an acceptable paper on this revelation.
Percy grinned. “And I thought fox shifters were an outlandish concept. But dragons?”
Arsenic tried to keep them focused. “So what traps a dragon in a Paper City? Do they have his hoard or his egg or something to blackmail him with?”
The Wallflower shook her head. “Dragons are aquatic creatures. Forget everything you think you know from Western mythology.”
“It does open up the possibility that we had them too. In the past. At least at some point.” Arsenic’s mind boggled thinking about Arthurian legends and winged iconography. “How could something that massive even fly?”
Percy, being Percy, explained, “It would be similar in principle to the kitsune. Control over density in order to shrink and expand apparent mass. I wonder what it is that allows shifters control over such in this part of the world, whereas in England there is a clear preservation of relative size. If Rue touched a kitsune would she change into a human-sized fox or would density control somehow transfer to her along with shape? Arsenic, what do you think?”
“You have the metanatural with you?” For the first time, the Wallflower’s tone showed surprise.
“Aye. But we canna run that experiment. She’s pregnant and any shifting could risk the bairn.” Arsenic was firm on the matter.
Percy’s sigh was sad. “Could we stay in Japan until after the baby comes? It would be awfully fun to experiment. The scientific community would find the information invaluable.”
Honestly, Arsenic adored the blighter, but sometimes Percy could be exasperating. “Could we please concentrate on the matter at hand?”
“Oh yes, dragons. Lord Ryuunosuke has a dragon form, and when he shifts it’s basically a big sea serpent that probably doesn’t weigh much. Either that or one of the reasons there aren’t any people in Edo is because he weighs about as much as a whole crowd of normal humans. Which would explain why the city was prone to shaking when he walked. In which case, if he’s married to Lady Sakura, how would they even copulate? The weight difference alone. He would crush her and…” Percy seemed to realize he had gone rather too far in a conjugal direction, with two ladies in attendance. He flushed and lowered his voice to mumble to himself, “There must be an equation.” And then, “I require a notebook.”
“She could be on top,” said Arsenic, because, well, she could.
Percy blinked at her. “She could? Oh yes, she could! Would you, is that” – he cleared his throat – “Would you maybe like to try that sometime?” He went even redder.
“I would,” said Arsenic, because she liked the idea.
“Oh,” said Percy. Then softly, “Good.”
The Wallflower said, “So you two are genuinely married? I thought that was a front. Lady Manami said that you wore no rings.”
“We’re na married,” Arsenic assured her.
The Wallflower was appropriately shocked.
Arsenic pulled them all back to the point. “What is the hold on Lord Ryuunosuke? Because clearly that’s our priority. Because of him, Lady Sakura is trapped as the Paper City’s tether. Because of him, the kitsune are mucking about with politics.”
The Wallflower looked ever-so-faintly smug. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Is it also the objective?” wondered Percy. “I mean are we getting involved? Are we going to free the dragon and cause a revolution or what have you?”
“Generally speaking that’s too bold an action for me,” said the Wallflower.
Percy looked up at the ceiling as if he might see all the way through it to The Spotted Custard above. Presuming it was still there. “Well, it’s not too bold for us.”
“Your generation is very dramatic.”
“I dinna ken what you’re grumbling about,” replied Arsenic. “From what I’ve garnered, all our drama might be construed as your generation’s fault.”
Things got progressively more peculiar from there on out.
The oddest thing, so far as Percy was concerned, was that he had evidently accepted the idea that dragons existed. He found himself seriously pondering how dragon metamorphosis might work. Were they bitten? Were they born? Was egg gestation involved? Perhaps the hold over Lord Ryuunosuke was, in fact, egg based?
It was bizarre.
Percy was finding, much to his distress, that the more he thought he knew about the world, the less he actually did.
The temple train chugged along, destination unknown.
The Spotted Custard floated far above them, location unknown.
Dragons and foxes were trapped in Paper Cities, reason unknown.
Percy was positively overwhelmed by things unknown.
It was not a comfortable position for an academic. So he focused on what he did know. The fact that apparently, Arsenic wanted to ride him in a decidedly explicit way. That he now knew what a lotus root looked like. He wondered if the two were connected. Then he had a sudden sense of inferiority, since a lotus root was quite large, by comparison.
In other words, Percy was undergoing a profound crisis of confidence while wearing buckskin breeches in a foreign land. He supposed he’d been in worse situations, but he couldn’t remember them at the moment. And he missed his library.
What he got instead was a very large bathtub.
Occasionally in one’s life, it turns out, one ends up in a large round wooden cistern of hot water, with a fox spirit and the woman one hopes to marry.
Or one does if one is Percy.
The temple train ended its lugubrious chugging run at sunset, at a station that was, if possible, even more unusual than the first. Instead of a courtyard arrangement, this one was landscaped with the express purpose of illuminating and celebrating, so far as Percy could tell, water features. Not waterfalls or birdbaths or fountains, but sinks and bathtubs. Things that ought to be hidden safely away behind firmly closed doors.
True, there were well-tended trees, clusters of exotic plants, mossy pathways, and beautifully arranged piles of stones, but then… there were large wine barrel contrivances which proved to be enormous bathtubs.
Communal bathtubs.
Percy found himself directed to strip and immerse himself in hot water – with other people. With women! The hot water was, quite frankly, not unwelcome, but to do such a thing in public when he was the only gentleman present?
Now, Percy knew perfectly well that there were such things as communal bathhouses during Roman times. He also knew that such structures still operated in certain countries formerly part of the Persian Empire. But these establishments were always described in Percy’s books as being divided by sex.
Fortunately for his strained sensibilities, those wandering around outside of said tubs donned short robes. Unfortunately, those present were the ladies of the temple – priestesses, staff, and so forth.
Never in his life had Percival Tunstell voluntarily showed ladies his bare arms and legs by traipsing around an open-air garden in a smock. He was horribly conscious of the fact that his limbs gangled and his skin popped against the darkness, for he was unconscionably pale.
He blocked out any memory of the act of walking through the trees, removing his robe behind a bush, and scuttling into a wooden tub in which Lady Manami and Arsenic already reclined. He did not look at them. He could only hope they tendered him the same courtesy.
He would hold on to that hope for all his remaining years.
What
he did remember later, was being in the hot water and trying desperately not to notice anything. When he looked around, as common courtesy required for conversation (because the ladies insisted on talking while they bathed), he made a point of meeting their eyes but nothing else.
Desperate for a distraction, Percy focused on trying to understand the plumbing of his current predicament.
The big wooden cistern was round and deep with a faucet part that was more an open-topped spigot that never stopped supplying fresh hot water. This suggested to Percy that there was a natural hot spring nearby to be tapped so indiscriminately. The general boiled-egg smell permeating the air supported this hypothesis.
As a result of the constant inflow, there was also a constant outflow via a spout-shaped drain to one side.
Percy had to admit that the hot water felt wonderful on his sore muscles (if horrible on his throbbing ankle), and he was delighted by the idea of becoming clean even if he must to do so in the company of two females.
Lady Manami appeared to find his discomfort diverting.
Arsenic seemed more comfortable than he, but Percy supposed that as a doctor she was accustomed to the naked body in its many forms.
To top it all off, the Wallflower joined them. Not in the hot water, but simply sitting off to one side, fully clothed, like a nanny keeping them company during bathtime – to prevent them from drowning.
Percy wanted to drown himself in embarrassment. “I mean to say, I’m open to new experiences but this is really beyond.”
“Beyond what?” asked Lady Manami.
They were speaking in Japanese in deference to her presence, but Percy’s mastery of the language was insufficient to cope with this crisis.
“The limits of my tether,” said Percy at last. Tilting his head back and looking up through the leaves into the starry sky, hoping against hope there was a fat ladybug dirigible coming to rescue him.
Honestly, he’d sooner be hobbling across a rice paddy.
“Chi,” the kitsune corrected him.
Percy latched on to the word. “I wonder if you might explain your understanding of this chi?”
The amusement in her tone suggested she was onto his diversionary tactics. “This is a good place for philosophy.”
Percy supposed he often had epistemological revelations in the bath so he could see her point.
“Think of chi as the water around us. The tub is the kitsune, or one of your werewolves. The stronger the spirit, the bigger the tub. What you might call Alpha. Or queen. Lady Sakura’s tub is big.”
“So is yours,” suggested Arsenic.
“Just so.” Lady Manami nodded. “The chi comes from all around us – the world, living things. Spirits collect it, where humans cannot. This collection gives us immortality, certain abilities, like changing shape. But we cannot keep chi. It is always there, filling us up, but we must also let it out, overflow. That is what you call tether, the draining of the tub. For some the water is moved from one tub to another, or to many others, like a pack.”
“Or hive.” Percy frowned in thought. “And when there is an imbalance between too much flowing in and too little going out, that causes problems.”
“Or vice versa.” Arsenic was excited too. They both liked the scientific implications of the metaphor. Her eyes were bright and pleased on his face. Sometimes not just his face. Percy squirmed a bit but he liked it.
Percy switched to English to better articulate his thoughts. “So what would Rodrigo be? If the working hypothesis is that preternatural touch interrupts the flow of aether, then do preternaturals turn off the chi spigot?”
Arsenic grinned. “And metanaturals take over the whole tub?”
Percy wrinkled his nose. “I’m not sure if the metaphor can stretch that far.”
The Wallflower spoke from the shadows. “I don’t think Lady Manami knows what preternaturals and metanaturals are.”
They switched back to Japanese.
Percy tried to explain. “We know others. Not spirits as you say. Human, but who take away the ability to change.”
Lady Manami nodded. “We have legends for that. Japan has no word that I know for them. I might say fangxiangshi.”
Percy pressed her. “And do you have legends of those who can become spirits for the space of a night? Humans who could be fox?”
Lady Manami looked surprised. “You know a flesh thief? I thought they were myth.”
Percy was hesitant. “So we thought dragons. Would either a fangxiangshi or a flesh thief be useful in dealing with Lord Ryuunosuke’s problem?”
“Fangxiangshi disrupt the chi. They do not break that which holds form.”
Arsenic nodded. “A preternatural dinna break a pack tether merely by touching a werewolf. Rue dinna destroy the fabric of what it means to be a werecat when she borrows Tasherit’s shape. Metanaturals and preternaturals interrupt the supernatural state but they dinna change the fact that their victims are supernatural.”
Percy was uncomfortable with the word victim, but he let it rest.
Lady Manami smiled. “But a shakubuku might still help Edo’s prisoners.”
“What’s a shakubuku?”
“A breaking of chi, an awaking.”
“Tether snap, or something less severe?” Percy looked to Arsenic.
She wrinkled her nose. “Not sure, let her continue.”
The kitsune did. “The dragon and his mate are stuck in the Paper City in all ways – spiritual, emotional, physical. A fangxiangshi might slice them free.”
“So we should set Rodrigo at them?” Percy shuddered to think what their Italian might do if let loose in Edo.
Arsenic ruminated. “I’ve always wondered if supernatural abilities are basically an allergic reaction to aether. Instead of breaking out in a rash, they turn hairy on full moon. Too much aether, like the grey, and they go into shock, or fall asleep, or go mad. Preternatural is a momentary inoculation to aetheric allergies.”
Percy was intrigued. “So how does tether to pack or hive fit into that?”
“It dinna, especially when it has physical components that react to the natural world, like holding a city in place.” She sighed and swished about in the hot water. “I need to work on my theory.”
The Wallflower said, “The longer I live and the more I travel the more I find that practicality is the enemy of wonder.”
“But we need to understand,” insisted Percy. “It’s the only way to fix anything.” He switched to Japanese. “The question is, Lady Manami, what exactly is the problem with Lord Ryuunosuke’s chi?”
“Yes, fire-hair, that is the question.”
“Is someone fiddling with his spigot?” Percy wondered, in English, causing both Arsenic and the Wallflower to chuckle.
Lady Manami said only, “Lady Sakura is sharing chi with her dragon.”
“They are tethered to each other?” Arsenic’s tone was all surprise.
Percy swiped a wet hand through his hair. “I’ve never heard of interspecies tethering before.”
“Just because you’ve not heard a thing, doesn’t mean it can’t be true.” The Wallflower waxed philosophical.
Percy pressed on. “She stays with him to keep him connected to chi, at the same time stretching her own? No wonder she is unwell.”
“With only the little he’s getting from her, Lord Ryuunosuke probably dinna have enough to shift forms or help,” added Arsenic.
Lady Manami nodded.
“The solution,” said Arsenic, “is to give Lord Ryuunosuke back his chi?”
Percy agreed. “Which is where, exactly? Is there a dragon pack? Or a dragon hive house?”
“Well,” said Lady Manami, sounding cheeky, “you’re sitting in it.”
The Wallflower explained. “Dragons are water spirits. I believe she’s implying that Lord Ryuunosuke’s tether is to a hot spring. It’s no more odd than a vampire queen being tethered to a London town house, is it?”
“The hot spring is not in good working order?�
�� Percy didn’t get the problem.
“What happens to a vampire queen taken from her house?”
“Oh! He’s swarming? But slowly, because what? The locals have been piping away all his water?” Percy’s brain hurt a little. “Are you saying this is a plumbing issue?”
Arsenic said, “The government imprisoned a water dragon in an air city because bathing is important. And his mate went with him to keep him safe and accidentally tethered Edo in place. The whole infrastructure grew around their tethers. So what do we do?”
“Destroy all the plumbing?” suggested Percy.
“And end civilization as we know it,” added the Wallflower, in a tone that suggested she was being facetious.
Percy was tolerably certain spies shouldn’t be facetious.
FOURTEEN
Dunking Is an Act of War
Arsenic supposed she’d had more peculiar conversations in her lifetime but not under more surreal circumstances.
The shared bathtub experience was odd and, to be honest, somewhat enjoyable. She thought a tub of such a size had some interesting medicinal applications. She wondered if she might build one for an infirmary someday.
Poor Percy remained deeply uncomfortable throughout. His muscles probably needed the soak – hers fairly did. With his hair wet, she noticed he had a nicely symmetrical skull. She did eventually use his ankle as an excuse to get them out.
The lad gave her a look of mixed horror and gratitude. Horror, presumably, at now having to determine how to extract himself and dress without complete exposure, and gratitude to have the trial by bath concluded.
Arsenic found Percy’s awkward attempts at modesty endearing, if mainly useless. She was doctor enough to evaluate his frame medically, and woman enough to appreciate it. He had nothing to be embarrassed of, so far as she could tell both professionally and aesthetically.
Reticence Page 26
