DAC 3 Precious Dragon (3 page)

The courtyard was filling fast, everyone shaking the telling sticks, concentrating like mad, a possessed woman (there was always one) weaving between. Her hands were full of chrysanthemum blooms which she ate methodically, petal by petal.

Mrs Pa threaded her way between the questioners and made her way out onto Shaopeng, where she was obliged to wait forty minutes for the next tram. Finally the rails hummed, and then the tram itself rattled into view at the end of Shaopeng Street. Passengers, desperate to get to work before they got fined, wrestled their way into the nearest carriage. There were too many people; arguments broke out along the margins. Mrs Pa, unresisting, let herself be carried with the flow through the doors and found herself in the center of the car, staring up at the ceiling. She could see nothing else. How would she know when they reached Ghenret? She could not remember the number of stops. She poked a young woman in the back; uninterested dark eyes looked down at her.

"Are you going to the harbor?"

"No; Paugeng," the young woman said. She wore a technician's overalls and the scarlet badge of the Paugeng Jaruda bird blazed above her breast.

"I am," someone said. "I'll tell you when we get there."

Mrs Pa squinted up. The handsome face turned to hers was pale; the golden eyes filled with amusement. A demon! Mrs Pa thought, startled. It had been a long time since she'd seen one of his kind; she'd thought she had lost the gift, if gift it was. Everyone else seemed to be ignoring him: probably they really couldn't see that he was there. Mrs Pa wondered whether to summon a charm against him, then dismissed the thought. At least someone had some manners, but what a poor pass, that even Hellkind were nicer to you than your own these days.

"Thank you, young man," she said, under her breath. The demon smiled. He had sharp teeth, too, she noticed. After Murray Town, the crowd thinned out and Mrs Pa could just about see through the murky window of the carriage.

"Where are we now?" Mrs Pa asked.

"Not far," the soft voice said. "Look, there's the Senditreya Endo. What's left of it, anyway."

Mrs Pa peered through the window. The iron doors of the ruined temple appeared briefly in view; the dome of the vaults catching the morning sun. They said that the Feng Shui Practitioners' Guild was rebuilding it, and would rededicate it to someone else, but they didn't seem to have got very far. The walls were still a tumble of masonry.

"Next stop's Ghenret," the demon said.

"Thank you," Mrs Pa said again. The demon nodded and when the little knot of passengers spilled out onto the Ghenret platform, he was gone, moving quickly through the crowd.

Mrs Pa walked slowly to the market, the next stop in her preparations. It was a long walk for an elderly lady from the platform to Ghenret harbor, and she took it slowly. It was still quite early. The crowd who had got off the downtown had dispersed and the walkway was quiet. She could hear the oily tide lapping against the harbor wall. The film that coated the waves collected the light and held it, sending pale mottled shadows across the surface of the water. The warehouse go-downs filed along the edge of the harbor, dwarfed by the snaking tower. The logo of Paugeng Pharmaceuticals, identical to the red badge on the unhelpful girl's clothing, was emblazoned over one side. Up there, away from the little world, lived Jhai Tserai. But whatever they might say about Jhai, she was reputed to be generous to her employees, and she was such a pretty girl, too. They looked after you in Paugeng, up to a point, of course. Mrs Pa had wanted her daughter Mai to apply there one day, rather than becoming a cleaner like her mother, but it hadn't happened. Never mind. Her daughter would soon be settled now. Mrs Pa was conscious of a delayed relief, so enormous that she had not allowed herself to feel it that morning. She had been waiting so long that she thought it would never come, and now it had.

The go-down market had been open since four that morning. Most of the best stuff was gone, but there were still things to be found if you knew people, and Mrs Pa knew a great many. She had lived here most of her life, after all. She moved through the canopied alleys, squeezing oranges, stuffing pak choi and marsh-grown water chestnuts into her battered bag, and keeping up a constant litany of conversation with her neighbors.

"You're buying a lot today," Miss Reng probed, eyeing the bulging bag.

"A special occasion!" Mrs Pa teased her.

"What would that be?"

So Mrs Pa, making the most of her big news, told her. Miss Reng gave a shriek of excitement, making people look round.

"Mai! Your daughter, getting married? How wonderful!"

Mrs Pa said, "That's right. I found out yesterday. It's only to be expected, of course."

"Of course," Miss Reng agreed, a little too quickly.

The news would be all over the district by noon. Mrs Pa, well pleased, lugged her shopping home and sat in her kitchen with a boiling kettle on the stove, waiting for the neighbors to drop by. She was not disappointed. A constant stream of people knocked on the door, on one pretext or another, throughout the day. Yes, it was true. Yes, she was so pleased, although, of course, she'd been expecting it. Mrs Pa started cooking well before dusk. Her anticipation grew. At last the phone call came.

"I'm sorry, Mother, the line's not very good. I had problems getting through." On the other end, Mai's voice was thin and disembodied. "Are you pleased?"

"Married! I can't believe it. It's wonderful. Where are you going to hold the ceremony? Had you thought?" Mrs Pa asked.

"There's a special boat . . . It's called Precious Dragon. It's coming to the city next week; you can get married on it. Ahn and I thought it would be nice."

"I'll call his parents," her mother said.

Giggling and chattering, they went into the details of the wedding. It was a terrible line, crackling as usual, but Mai explained everything twice, and then Mrs Pa told her daughter about the cooking. "I'll send it over tonight, as soon as it's ready."

"Oh, Mother! That's so good of you." Mai talked on even as the line deteriorated, but at last they hung up and Mrs Pa, as she had promised, rang the bridegroom's parents in preparation for the wedding that had, at last, arrived.

She had not left the vaults for years, and now the summons had come. Embar Dea swam out through West Iron Gate, feeling the heavy gush of water along her flanks as the gate drew to a close. The soft, muffled clang that it made as it shut behind her echoed along the channel. Embar Dea moved swiftly, seeking to overcome fear. How long had it been since she had passed this way? Thirty years? After that last journey she had been confined to the peace and silence of Sulai-Ba, before its ending. The others had told her things—tormenting the elderly being with horror stories in the darkness. They told her about the pollution; the bands of oil through which they must move like a dancer between banners, the chemicals which stung the eyes and left an acidity at the back of the throat, the dangerous wash of the canal boats and junks, so many more than in her own time. Embar Dea was afraid of these things, and afraid, too, of the people themselves: the people who lived in the world beyond the Night Harbor, their sharpness, their long hands, their little heads and little eyes.

Now, after Ayo's death, Embar Dea had been summoned to the new temple, to Tenebrae, although she did not know why. She had expected to remain here. To live out her days with the days of Sulai-Ba. But now she would have to travel through the canal system until she reached Ghenret, and then take the underground channels to the mouth of the delta, going east into the inner seas to where Tenebrae lay. It was a human name, appropriately enough for the new temple, but, strangely, a Western one. The Kingdom of Shadows. But then, not all of her kind were from the east.

Embar Dea reached the first filter, reached out with a claw, and waited for its heavy lock to swing open. The current, released, bubbled around her and she went through into Second Filter Channel. One more to go, and then she was out into the side channel that led to the canal. Already the water had a different taste, and Embar Dea, used to purity, wrinkled her muzzle at its sourness. When she reached Third Filter she almost turned and swam back; better to die a quick and bloody death at the hands of a friend in cold, clean Sulai-Ba than breathe this filthy stuff. But friends may be dead already: she did not know where Onay and Merren Ame were. Out at sea? Or dead, rolling to rot in the stinking waters of the canal or pinned to the bottom of a trawler with an illegal harpoon through the lungs? She had not heard from them for such a long time, and so she continued to swim, coming out with a snort and a gasp into the reeking water of the side channel.

When she came to the round outlet that led into the main Jhenrai, it was not so bad. The canals were supposed to be flushed every few days by opening the big sluices that led off from Ghenret. She could taste a cleaner undertone of salt through the acids and detergent, and the water seemed to be flowing fairly quickly. It was dark at the bottom of the canal; Embar Dea, afraid, had no wish to be seen making her journey. Boats tethered at the surface swung and knocked in the flow, the black bulks of their hulls rose above her in the darkness. Someone threw something over the side, an unpleasant mixture of solids and acid which drifted down through the tainted water and which Embar Dea swerved to avoid. She was following the salt, coming up toward Ghenret. Her instructors had told her when the sluice was to be opened, and she would have to pass through or be penned in the muck for another three days. Thus Embar Dea hurried, an elderly water dragon, traveling quickly and unseen through the silted canal to the harbor.

It was evening when the visitors came for Pin H'siao. The performance had just ended, and Pin was in the process of folding up his costume when he turned to find Miss Jhin standing nervously behind him.

"Pin," she said, encouragingly. "There are some people here to see you." In a lowered voice she added, "I think they want to make a, um, a booking." Miss Jhin, delicate soul that she was, preferred to turn a blind eye to the more sordid activities of her chorus; he could see the distaste in her eyes.

"All right," he told her, wearily. "I'll sort it out."

"Thank you, Pin," Miss Jhin said, her face betraying gratitude. Pin tidied himself up and followed her out of the dressing room. Two people were waiting in the hallway. One was a woman in early middle age, with the trademark blackened teeth and lacquered hairdo of a professional madam. The girl who stood by her side had a pretty, empty face, reminding Pin uneasily of the lost Maiden Ming, whom he had not seen since the night of the Paugeng party. That had been two days ago now, and he had heard nothing from the policeman or the demon. And Ming had not returned. Guiltily, he could not bring himself to feel too sorry about that.

"How may I help you?" he asked.

The Madam gave a slight bow.

"We are interested in your company this evening, at a small soirée in Shaopeng. Not very far, and possibly for no more than an hour or so."

"I see." Well, that didn't sound too bad, Pin thought. But he'd been wrong before, Gods knew. "All right. Would you like me to accompany you now?"

"That would be most acceptable. We will, of course, want to come to some sort of arrangement: I have a list of the rates from your charming chorus director." Holding out the list, she indicated the higher end of the fee scale.

"Most acceptable," Pin said, echoing the Madam. If he could get more bookings like this, he thought, he might be able to start saving to get out of here. This decision had come to him on the morning after the party at Paugeng, which he had spent in a daze thinking about the demon. He needed a goal, he had decided. He followed the Madam and her assistant out into the balmy evening air of Shaopeng.

They took a circuitous route, bypassing the downtown station and heading down a maze of back alleyways to a long, low building with a red lacquered roof. A neon sign hung outside the door, and as soon as he set eyes on it, Pin stopped dead.

"You didn't tell me that this was—that sort of place," he protested, trying not to sound too accusing.

"Please don't worry," the Madam replied, rather sharply. "This is not the usual kind of service."

Pin stared unhappily at the sign, which bore, in bright pulsing letters, the word for Hell. He had only ever been in a demon lounge once before, but his visit had passed in a haze of narcola and panoline. The lounges catered to the more exotic end of the market; the services in which a wide range of drugs played a major role. It was said, beneath people's breath, that the inhabitants of the lounges were no narcotic-induced hallucination, but were real: minor denizens of Hell, conjured up on a short-term lease to service the clients of the lounge. It was not, by anyone's definition, safe sex.

Pin's memories of that event, which he did not care to examine too closely, were a blur of images: elegantly contorted limbs, bright, inhuman eyes, and waves of pain. It had not been an experience that he was eager to repeat.

"I'll double the fee," said the Madam, through pinched, painted lips. Pin sighed. He might as well go through with it, he thought. The money he could save would help him to escape from his life all the sooner. Taking a deep breath, he stepped through the door into the florid décor of the hallway.

The Madam's assistant led him through the labyrinth of passages into a small circular room. Here, he was invited to kneel before a low, ornately carved table, and then the assistant left. Pin waited apprehensively. At last the door opened, and a group of people filed in to kneel in a circle around Pin, arranging their robes around them. He looked warily around the room. Their faces were in shadow, but nine pairs of eyes stared back at him with a consuming eagerness. The woman closest to him, wrapped in a brocaded dressing gown, was the Madam. Her raven hair was piled upon her head with pins. She gave him a thin-lipped smile, and turned up the lamp so that it cast flickering shadows across her face.