The Conclave of Shadow (15 page)

I gave Tsung a long, searching look. He flinched and looked away before I could read more than my own biases and suspicions in his expression.

I stopped trying when Mei Shen dug a burning elbow into my side. “Ow. Okay. So, Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers go back to their thieving ways. This time, it's tech from Argent – gonna go out on a limb and say they used that proprietary energy technology to get the lighthouse up and running.”

“And they are using that to siphon off bits of the Voidlands to make their knights,” Mei Shen murmured.

It made a horrible kind of sense. The Conclave knights weren't like any other Shadow denizen I'd encountered. They were solid. They bled. They could cross over to our world on their own. “The knights go back long before Lung Di abandoned his wards, but given what you saw in the cell block at Alcatraz, I can believe the Conclave has stepped up production.”

We came to a fallen tree at least two stories tall and covered with black fungus. Our conversation stumbled to a halt while we waited for the Lady's gargoyles to carry us over it – even Mei Shen, though she could have flown herself. But that would have lit the entire forest up with her light, and we'd already drawn enough attention.

“What about this new master the Lady mentioned?” Tsung asked, more to Mei Shen than myself. “We hadn't heard anything about that.”

“Guess we could, y'know, ask,” I said. We were approaching the ring of trees that sheltered the Lady's camp. A crowd of residents who had been left behind scurried out to greet our return. I pushed forward toward the Lady, sidestepping a goblin, ducking under a kraben wing, hopping a few trailing tentacles from the ambulatory octopodes. “Pardon, Lady. We didn't mean to upset you with… our…” My apology dribbled to a stop as I saw the creature leading the welcoming committee. “T-Templeton?”

“Hi, Missy!” And then the rat astonished me even more, splaying out his paws before the Lady and burying his nose in the mulch in something very like a bow. The gems set in the leather gauntlet fastened around his front leg caught the light from Mei Shen's scales.

The Lady knelt and set a proprietary hand on his flank, looking up at me. “You know my lieutenant. I hope you will not challenge me over him?”

Challenge her? “Er. No. Templeton is free to do what he wants.”

The Lady stood. “You are an odd creature.” She glared down at Templeton. “And you were instructed to stay and observe.”

“I have news,” Templeton said. It was strange to see him being so solemn. But his solemnity broke when he looked up at me, all sparkling eyes and ratty grin. “I'm a spy, Missy. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you before.”

“S'okay,” I said faintly. Of all things, I hadn't expected to see Templeton here. And I certainly hadn't expected him to be a double agent for the Lady. Maybe I should have challenged her for him. He was going to get himself hurt. Or worse. “Spies have to keep secrets.”

“And share their news,” said the Lady. “Inside. To shield us from hunting eyes.” She made her way through the passage, and we all squeezed after her. The motley guard scattered once we'd reached the safety of the warded clearing, but the Lady didn't stop until she reached the yurt at the center of her camp and motioned us all to enter.

The inside of the Lady's home was like no place I'd ever seen in the Shadow Realms. It was warmly lit with a hodgepodge of lamps and lanterns – paper and colored glass and cut tin. It was cozy. There was color. Granted, mostly dark jewel tones. It came from a collection of junk that would make any thrift-store hoarder drool with envy. A full suit of dented, tarnished armor listed against a taxidermied bear with patchy brown fur and dusty glass eyes. A brass samovar filled with peacock feathers permanently depressed the jagged keys of a folding harpsichord. The photo that she'd made off with of younger me with my missing tooth and my spotless gi was propped up on the scratched lid. Threadbare carpets covered the ground, the central one picking out the gruesome slaughter of a unicorn by a pack of hounds. The vermillion of the hounds' blood and the silver-gold of the unicorn's seemed to float a breath above the carpet, so vivid were they in comparison to the other, muted colors of the weft and weave.

The Lady sat in a high-backed chair that was rendered more thronelike by her presence. “Report,” she told Templeton, who had settled in a hunch of ratty obeisance at her feet.

Templeton hadn't quite gotten the knack of serving two mistresses at once. He worried his tail between his paws and looked back at me. “He knows you were there. He knows who you are. He has your scent. You left your backpack.”

I glanced at Mei Shen and Tsung, but they looked as mystified as I felt. I suffered a twinge of panic that Templeton meant that someone else had guessed the connection between Missy and Mr Mystic, but there was nothing in my bag to lead to that connection. Even Jack's number on my phone was coded and went to a burner. “Who?”

The Lady responded for Templeton. “The Conclave's new master. He has been hunting, and now he has found you. I suppose it was inevitable. You should remain here. It will be safer.”

Safer from what? “Who is this master? Who's hunting me?” Until today, the Conclave had left Mr Mystic alone, and they didn't know about Missy at all.

“The great cat. The shadow cat.” She tilted her head. “Though I suppose it can be said that all cats belong partly to the Shadow Realms and partly to Alam al-Jinn.”

A shadow cat? Or… no.
The
shadow cat.

The cat. I only knew of one feline who had it in for me. Lao Hu.

“Tiger,” I muttered.

I was so fucked.

A
fter a quick breakdown
of what had been in my backpack, Mei Shen and Tsung agreed that it would be suicidal for me to return home. We could hope that Lao Hu had no great knowledge of how the real world worked, but Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers did, at least well enough to plan successful raids against Argent in cities across the world. If they were helping Lao Hu, he'd have my home address, most of my friends and former flops, the Dragon's Pearl and Dojo d'Cho. Anything related to Missy Masters was a danger. I didn't even dare bring Jack into it. Friends don't let friends get on the bad side of the chthonic expression of feline cunning and caprice.

“You could come with us. David and I can keep you safe,” Mei Shen said, worrying my hand between hers. It no longer burned. With the Lady's help, we'd crossed over into the real world. My daughter looked like a normal young woman again.

Young woman. I was going to have to force myself to get used to that as a concept.

My prediction had been correct on our location. The Lady's camp stood in the heart of Muir Woods, only a few hundred yards from the visitors' center. The redwoods seemed puny in comparison to their Shadow Realms counterparts, but the fresh scent of sun-warmed bark and broken evergreen needles was welcome. Mist still sat in the hollows and low places, despite the day pushing past morning. We'd gone all night in the Shadow Realms, between walking the length of the bay, our capture, and our time touring the Lady's wards.

We stood at the parking lot dropoff, saying our goodbyes next to the town car that Tsung had called using the lone payphone. I smoothed Mei Shen's hair. “I suspect I'm safest in the Lady's camp. I'm more worried about you and Tsung. What are you going to do?”

“Sleep?” Mei Shen huffed softly. “Continue to work on my uncle's wards. After seeing how the Lady's wards work, I wonder if I'm going about it all wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“That slimy black stuff that was growing on everything? She's using it to gather energy from the Shadow Realms itself. She isn't powering the wards. The Shadow Realms are.”

Well, that couldn't be sustainable. It was already decimating the forest. “We are
not
covering San Francisco in black mold,” I said. I was putting my foot down on that as a Bad Idea.

Mei Shen giggled, and I couldn't help but join her. We were well past sleep-deprived city and heading toward loopyville. “It would solve the housing crisis and the whole tech-bro problem. No more families being evicted out of Chinatown,” she said.

“No. Black. Mold. I expect Tsung and I will be in agreement for once.”

Mei Shen sighed and pulled away. “I wish…”

“What?”

She hugged herself, chewing her lip, before blurting, “It doesn't help that you refuse to use his name.”

I wanted to argue, but she was probably right. It may have been unconscious. It was also deliberate. “I don't like him.”

Mei Shen's barked laugh caused several passing hikers to give us odd looks. “Yes. You have made that abundantly clear. You. Mian Zi. Father. And you have made it clear that you think less of me for thinking well of him.”

Again, it was hard to argue with hard truths. I held out my hands. “Can you at least understand why we're all so worried?”

“No. Nothing is as clear as any of you have taught me it was. My uncle has done bad things. He also held the Voidlands at bay when nobody else would. And that he isn't doing so now is because of what you and Father did.”

Ouch. “You mean giving birth to you.”

“I do not regret being alive. And I accept the responsibility you both have placed on me. But I no longer blindly accept that either of you knows what is best. I will determine that for myself.”

Well. Shit. Maternal pride was a fucked up thing. I pulled her into a hug before I could start bawling. “I can live with that.”

David Tsung finished conferring with the driver and came around the front of the car, scuffing at the gravel to announce his approach. “We should go. Are you sure you won't come with us?”

I gave Mei Shen a final squeeze before releasing her. We both spent a few moments wiping eyes and noses. “The Lady knows more about what's going on than anyone. She can protect me until I come up with some kind of a plan to deal with… all of this.”

“Right. Anything to add to your care package?” We'd discussed what I would need: a few changes of clothes, including a suit and hat in case Mr Mystic was needed. A few burner phones and a tablet. Cash. Food and water. He hadn't raised a fuss at any of my requests.

Dammit. I was going to have to start trying not to disapprove. “I think I'm good.”

“Right then. Six pm. I'll tell the driver to wait in case you get… delayed.” He held open the door for Mei Shen before climbing in himself.

“Thanks. And… David?” I caught the door and pretended to ignore his stunned look and Mei Shen's small, pleased smile. “At the risk of setting feminism back several decades and horribly offending my daughter's sense of independence in the process… take care of her.”

David nodded. I still didn't trust him, but I believed him when he said, “With my life.”

W
andering Muir Woods
for a while would have been a nice break from the darkness of the Shadow Realms and the stink of heated rubber and burning asphalt, but I was exhausted, and paranoia had me peering through ferns and jumping at every loud noise that echoed through the busy hub. Templeton had assured us that Lao Hu knew who I was, but not where I was. The assumption among the Conclave was that Mei Shen and I had escaped by flying across the bay. Before vanishing into the water, my Blood-Dimmed Tide had apparently covered that section of the island with a blood scent so thick that not even Lao Hu could track through it. Small mercies there.

I used the money pooled from Mei Shen and…
David
to buy a couple of overpriced bottles of water and a few packaged meals from the visitors' center café before wandering up one of the trails to the spot where we'd stepped through earlier.

Templeton, bless him, was waiting for me on the other side when I slipped back through. And with him–

“Rover!” I exclaimed. Possibly too brightly, as my voice echoed through the night-dark forest, bouncing oddly off the huge trees. Templeton flinched and glanced around nervously. I ignored him in favor of holding up my hand for the flitting spark to land on. Rover's carapace – a few shades darker than Mei Shen's scales, but no less shiny – closed with an impressive snap for a critter no bigger than my thumbnail.

I should not have been this happy to be reunited with a bug I'd only just met. Or made? “I thought he got shredded by the gargoyles,” I explained to Templeton, shifting Red Rover from the back of my hand to my shoulder. He perched there like a shiny, bloody ladybug pin.

“I thought he might be one of yours. He looks like the others.” Templeton sounded positively grumpy, which I thought might be due to my shouting while Lao Hu was on the hunt. He turned and trundled back in the direction of the Lady's camp. There was something odd about his gait, the way his coat bristled along his back and his tail swished in agitation.

Could Templeton be jealous?

“Hey.” I hurried to catch up with him, bumping his flank gently with my knee. “You're still my favorite guy. My Rat-Friday.”

He glanced up at me, and I realized that his gait was because he had his paw, the one with the jeweled gauntlet, clutched protectively to his chest. “Even though I serve the Lady now?”

“Are you kidding me? I'm proud of you for that. Although I don't understand why you're doing it.”

“Because of…” Templeton glanced around, but there was just us, the trees, and the black fungus creeping over everything. “
Him
,” he hissed.

Him? Lung Di?

Or. No. Him, Lao Hu. Tiger. “You became a spy to protect me?” Shit, I was going to cry again. I really needed to eat and sleep.

We came to the tree with the hidden tunnel, and Templeton led the way through. The ambulatory octopodes were standing guard on the other side with their Louisville Slugger clutched between them. They waved us past after a few watery blinks.

Templeton seemed to relax once we were in the safety of the camp. “He took over the Conclave so that he could hunt you, and in return he taught the Conclave how to use the light to shape the voidstuff more quickly. I couldn't help hunt you. You're my Missy. So I came to the Lady and said I would serve her if she would protect you.”

I stumbled to a stop just outside the yurt, the edge of the flap wrinkling in my grip. “Oh, Templeton.”

“I have to go back now. But you are safe.”

“But…” I struggled with my protective urge. What I'd told the Lady was true. Templeton wasn't mine to order about. He made his own decisions – even if many of those decisions seemed to be for my benefit, something I didn't know how to curb. This was why I tried not to call on him too often. I didn't want him putting himself at risk to help me.

“I'm safe here now. I could challenge the Lady for you–” I fell silent when his whiskers drooped. Shit. “Rover. Red Rover.” I plucked the little scarab from my shoulder. “Go with him. Stay hidden. Help him as though he were me. I place you and all the Blood-Dimmed Tide under Templeton's command. Understand?”

Rover flashed and fluttered down to land on Templeton's gauntlet, settling above the opal in the center like he was another jewel.

“He is… very pretty,” Templeton said, snuffling at his new gem. “Thank you, Missy.”

I crouched down to hug him. “Don't do anything stupid. Keep yourself safe.”

He nuzzled my cheek. “I will return when I can with more news,” he said, and trundled away admiring his new pal. It didn't escape my notice that he hadn't made any promises about his safety.

Feeling pretty surly and with nobody present on whom I could fairly vent my irritation, I shoved my way into the Lady's yurt.

T
he Lady sat
on her throne with the shreds of my coat spread across her lap. She seemed to be picking it apart into pattern pieces with a pair of embroidery scissors. I really didn't want to know what place it would take in her collection of junk. I dragged the bench away from the harpsichord, straddled it, and dug in to one of my boxed lunches.

I devoured most of a tofu wrap with peanut sauce before I started to feel vaguely human again. I washed it down with one of my bottled waters, ran my tongue over my teeth. Lordy, I needed a toothbrush.

“These wards you've created. Mei Shen says you're tapping in to the Shadow Realms to power them. Eating away at it.”

“All wards must be powered by something.” The Lady had changed out of the fatigues and… well, I could hardly say back into her gown when the gown seemed to be made of the same stuff that she was. She'd finished picking apart my coat and started piecing it back together with patchwork bits of fabric and silver thread. Was she… mending my coat?

“All wards?” I asked. I knew big wards seemed to need it. Lung Di had imprisoned Lao Hu and the other Guardians of China – and all the Chinatowns – to create his barriers. That was why Lao Hu had it in for us. But… “Even the little ones, like the one you scraped into my wall?”

“Little wards require little power. Great wards require great power. Few things are powerful enough to fuel the wards that hold back the Voidlands. So I use the potential of this land. It is not without cost, I admit.”

I used a wet nap to clean my fingers and thought about that cost. The Shadow Realms scared me, but they had their place and their function. They were meant to be a buffer between the Ten Thousand Things and the source that could not be named. At least, that had been Jian Huo's way of explaining it. Lung Di had made what was on the other side of the Voidlands sound a lot more terrifying and, having seen it for myself, I was inclined to agree with him on that point.

“Could something else… someone else… power it?”

The Lady paused mid-stitch. Light from the lamps flashed off her needle and the silver thread. “Such as?”

“Lao Hu?”

She knotted off the piece she was working on and started on another. “I can't imagine the cat being amenable to that.”

“Wasn't planning on asking him,” I muttered. Though that wasn't precisely true. He was my last resort if my plan A fell through. “What about another realm? You mentioned the realm where the Djinn come from? Alam al-Jinn? You're familiar with it?”

The Lady stopped her mending again and leaned forward while I fidgeted on my bench. “So you suggest, instead of devouring this realm, that we substitute another?”

“No. Not exactly. Look, the best solution would be a balanced approach. The Voidlands are encroaching because something on the other side is pushing. They're out of balance. The Conclave–” The Lady hissed and drew back. I held up a hand. “Hear me out. The Conclave has figured out a way to redirect that energy. But it still has to go somewhere, so they're making more and more knights. I think we can all agree that's going to be a problem, especially if you keep weakening the foundation of your power in your own attempts to push back the Voidlands.”

“I will not work with those men. They take everything that is precious.”

“And I'm not asking you to. They're not exactly my favorite people, what with being allied with Lao Hu and all. I'm just suggesting a more balanced exchange. We figure out how they're siphoning off the void, and we feed that energy into Alam al-Jinn, which is also out of balance. The void gets burned off safely, then we use the surplus energy from Alam al-Jinn to ward off the weakened Voidlands.”

The Lady sat back in her chair, long fingers stroking a ragged gash in my coat. “We will need to take away the Conclave's stolen technology and subvert their lighthouse to our use.”