Silver Phoenix (44 page)

The other two closed in on Ai Ling, hands outstretched, hissing her name.

She felt the crackle in her hair as all three demons were enveloped in a blinding light and flung against the kitchen wall. Ai Ling clutched her jade pendant, burning in her palm.

“Go!” she shouted.

She threw the back door open and jumped into the small alleyway that ran behind the restaurant. The stench of rotten cabbage filled her nose. She looked back past Chen Yong to see the three demons from the dining room stagger after them. She splashed through a puddle of rancid water and slipped, reeling backward. Chen Yong caught her and pushed her upright again, thrusting her forward.

She ran with Chen Yong at her heels, the sound of her heart and breath thundering in her ears. The alleyway was narrow and dark. She ran blind, hoping to come to the end of the passageway and an open street. A gray stone wall, a little taller than Chen Yong, blocked their path. They were trapped. She turned to find fiends shuffling toward them, all hissing her name.

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“Climb the wall, I’ll help you,” Chen Yong said.

He lifted her, and her hands searched for a hold among the rough stones. She pulled herself up as Chen Yong boosted her by the feet from below. She perched on the top of the wall, the width of it no more than her foot. She reached down to Chen Yong. The demons swarmed around him, tongues lolling and arms outstretched.

He looked up at her with an unreadable expression. “Run,”

he said.

“Take my hand.” She stretched toward him, and their hands clasped just as the wretched creatures fell upon him.

Ai Ling watched with horror as his amber eyes began to fade to white. His tongue emerged from his mouth, and his face distorted. She hurtled into his being with fury and felt the onslaught of the evil that flooded his spirit. She fought against it, whirling through him in a blinding rage, destroy-ing the seeping fi lth of the night worms’ tainted touch.

I can’t lose you, was her only tangible thought. She held on to it as she fought. She saw nothing, only felt the blazing heat of her spirit as it coursed through his. Finally, sensing a balance return, she saw through him; she squatted on the wall, their fingers twined together, her face pallid and tight.

In a rage of violence not his own, Chen Yong knocked the demons to the ground. She snapped back into her own body. Gasping, the world spun, and she gripped the narrow wall with both hands. Chen Yong stood below her, head 251

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bent, looking at the bodies around him. They were themselves again, and all lay unconscious on the ground. The servant girl bled profusely from her gaping throat.

Chen Yong stooped down and leaned his ear over her face. He placed a hand on her breast and lifted an ashen face. “She’s dead,” he said.

His clear eyes filled her with relief, although they were dark with sorrow. They were his eyes. Did he realize what had happened? She could do nothing but shake her head—

another innocent life lost because of her. She spoke a prayer under her breath.

“Let’s go this way,” she said. “I can see the main street from here.” Her insides felt twisted, her chest heavy as she dropped down clumsily on the other side of the wall.

Chen Yong climbed over the stone wall with ease, and they returned to the main street. Her legs were shaking; she was barely able to walk.

“They were night-worm fi ends,” she said.

Chen Yong stopped and regarded her. “I was trying to think if I’ve come across them in any of my readings.” He shook his head in obvious admiration. “You win.”

“It’s from
The Book of the Dead
,” she said.

“I was never allowed to read it.”

She knew most of the text by heart.

“The initial curse was set by someone powerful. I don’t recall the passing of the evil through touch in my readings.

That was something new.”

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Chen Yong stood in the crowd, the people moving past him like water against a stone. He shielded and protected her with his body.

“But you were stronger,” he said. “I felt you within me fighting. I had no willpower against it. I would have been one of them within a moment’s time.”

So he knew.

“How did you do it?” he asked.

She looked down at her hands, smudged with grime. Tears began to well in her eyes. They were her friends. And now Li Rong was dead, and she had put Chen Yong in danger again.

Chen Yong guided her to a stone bench. They had walked into a lush open garden within one of the massive town squares without Ai Ling noticing. The ebony stone of the bench was inlaid with gold plum blossoms around its edge.

She traced the curved lines with one finger. Only in the Emperor’s city. Anywhere else, and the people would have scraped off the gold with their pocketknives.

“I’m thinking of Li Rong,” she finally mustered through tears.

Chen Yong nodded. “I miss my brother more than I can express. It’s a pain I’ve never known—not even—” He stopped abruptly.

Not even compared to losing your first love, she thought.

“I can’t lose you too,” she said.

Chen Yong turned so she could see his face. “You won’t.”

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They sat shoulder to shoulder, watching the sunlight filter through the trees, the air scented with earth and the subtle perfume of roses.

“We can pay tribute to Li Rong when this is over,” he said in a quiet voice, breaking the silence.

Ai Ling looked away, feeling her stomach clench. Chen Yong would forgive her. Once he saw Li Rong again. “We should go to the Palace,” she said, too abruptly.

“But how? They won’t admit just anyone. The walls are too tall to climb. No way in but through the main gate.”

“There’s a back gate. The one leading to the inner chambers and living quarters of the Emperor,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Father told me,” she said.

“Do you know anything else about the Palace layout? Its routines?”

Ai Ling sighed. “No.” She scuffed the ground with her worn shoe. “I didn’t plan on sneaking in.”

Chen Yong cocked his head. The color had returned to his face. She remembered the filmy white that had glazed over his eyes, and shuddered.

“I thought we’d knock . . . and ask to be let in,” she said.

He threw his head back and laughed. She smiled, even though he laughed at her expense.

“I was thinking too much like a man.” He grinned, then his face grew serious. “But we’d walk straight into the hands of the enemy.”

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Ai Ling’s fingers made star shapes now, triangle after triangle on the stone bench. “I think that’s what I need to do.

Walk into the hands of the enemy.”

“You’re the leader, Ai Ling. I just try to stay alive.” He smiled, but it did not touch his eyes.

“I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you.” She swallowed the knot in her throat. “I would never have come this far.”

“You’ve returned the favor more than once.”

She rose, feeling weary and drained. What wouldn’t she give to be home right now with Taro curled in her lap and her mother sipping a cup of tea across from her? But being home would not make things right again.

They walked north. The midday crowd thinned as the sun grew hotter and people in the packed taverns and restaurants escaped the heat. If she thought Qing He was big, the Emperor’s city must have been ten times its size, the Palace secured within its heart, nestled in the inner city of Huang Long.

They finally saw the massive moon-shaped gate of the Palace of Fragrant Dreams after what seemed like a half-day of walking. Sentries guarded either side of the gate, but their post was so high up she could not see anything except moving shadows within the observation decks. No one was down below to indicate how a person could enter.

Ai Ling scanned the wall. It stretched on for as far as she could see in both directions. “This way,” she finally said, 255

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turning right and walking along the expanse of stone.

They hugged the wall of the Palace, and rounded yet another corner after a long stretch of walking. Her legs ached, and her chafed feet felt on fi re.