The Demi-Monde: Summer (41 page)

‘Save the Empress, save the Messiah!’ screamed Xi Kang to the four bearers as he drew his sword. ‘Run as you’ve never run before. Run, while I hold them here.’

Dong E couldn’t believe what the old NoN was saying. ‘That’s madness, Xi Kang … it’s suicide.’

The NoN shook his head. ‘No, the bridge is so narrow that it can be held by one man. They will only be able to attack me one at a time.’

‘You will die.’

Xi Kang laughed. ‘I am old and my race is run. Death walks behind me. But I can think of no better way to die than protecting the daughter of the Emperor I loved and the Messiah who will bring peace to the Demi-Monde.’ He pressed a ring into Dong E’s hand. ‘This is the Imperial Ring given into my care by your father. It is yours by birth and by right. But know this, with it comes grave responsibility: you must lead your people out of the shadow cast by Empress Wu and her HerEtical hatred. Do this and I will not have died in vain.’ He slapped Feng Menlong on the shoulder. ‘Run quickly, my faithful friend, you carry the future on your shoulders.’

With that Xi Kang bowed to Dong E, the rain streaming down his face masking his tears. ‘I salute Empress Dong E, True Empress of the Demi-Monde, of the Great Beyond and of all the Kosmos, Blessed and Much Beloved by ABBA, and I pray that HeShe grants you Nine Thousand Years of Peace and Contentment.’

Then he turned to face the onrushing guards.

As he stood poised in the centre of the Bridge, a strange calm descended upon Xi Kang. For the first time in his life he believed he was truly experiencing
wu wei
, that his soul had become suffused with the Nothingness of the Kosmos, that all was Correct and in Harmony. Now he saw clearly – his old eyes
suddenly sharp and true – saw that there were twenty guards advancing towards him. Now he heard clearly, he heard the slap of their sandals on the wooden beams of the Bridge and their panted breath. And now he understood clearly all that had evaded his understanding.

‘So ABBA,’ he said to the empty night, ‘you come to me at last. You come to the one who has always doubted you, the one who has always scoffed when your name was invoked. Tired of tricks, eh? Tired of playing hide-and-seek? Tired of moving in such mysterious ways? So you finally reveal yourself to this old doubter. Then know this: I am ready to fight and I am ready to die, but I am old and I am weak. So I call on you and on my ancestors to help me in my moment of need. I call on you to help me defend the life of the daughter of my friend and Emperor. I call on you to help me save the Messiah you have sent to guide the people of the Demi-Monde to Ying. And for your help I offer this in return: that when I die, your name will be on my lips so that my enemies will know I died with ABBA at my side and in my soul.’

The guards were only five metres from him.

‘NoN Xi Kang, stand aside by order of Her Imperial Majesty Empress Wu!’

Xi Kang laughed. ‘NoN Xi Kang is no more: in his place stands Prime Minister Wen Tiangiang, loyal Servant to the True Empress Dong E, Defender of the Messiah and Blessed of ABBA. And know this, CaptainFemme, I will not allow you to pass.’

‘You are a fool: the Emperor and his children are dead and you are but one against twenty. Put down your sword, old NoN, it is impossible to stand alone against Destiny.’

Xi Kang shook his head. ‘But I do not stand alone, CaptainFemme. Do you not see that I am as one with ABBA? Do you not see, Captain, that I have achieved ABBAsoluteness, my body,
my mind and my soul united with the Kosmos? Do you not see that I stand with ABBA by my side?’

That simple statement seemed to disturb the guards. As Xi Kang stood there with the rain pouring down on him, he saw them fidget uncomfortably and cast anxious glances at one another. With a swagger Xi Kang turned Soul Stealer’s long blade in the moonlight, letting his enemies see the deadly steel that awaited them.

‘Understand that ABBA has ordained that I die with my sword in my hand, a sword forged to destroy all those who would threaten the True Empress, Dong E. Know that I made a Sacred Oath to protect her. Know that I am her godfather and that I will not violate this Oath. You shall not pass.’

‘You are just a single sword, old NoN. You will die.’

‘I am a sometime philosopher and poet and as such have a great reverence for words. So I quote now from a poem written by a forgotten
gaijin
poet named Macaulay:

To every man upon this world
,

Death cometh soon or late
.

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds
,

For the ashes of his fathers

And the temples of his gods?’

A smile illuminated Xi Kang’s face. ‘Brilliant; if I didn’t know better I’d have thought Macaulay was a Chink.’ And with that Prime Minister Wen Tiangiang, loyal Servant to the True Empress Dong E, Defender of the Messiah and Blessed of ABBA, raised Soul Stealer high over his head and hurled himself forward screaming his war cry, ‘For the True Empress and for ABBA!’

Burlesque decided he didn’t like Trixie Dashwood. He had heard all the stories about how good a commander she was, how she and her fighters had fought the UnFunnies to a standstill and how it was thanks to her that there was still blood available in Rangoon, but to his mind, there was something not quite right about the girl. It was her eyes that gave him the collywobbles: they had the same cold implacability he’d seen in Beria’s. They snarled out at the world with an intensity that could split rock, so much so that every time she looked in his direction, he thought he was going to shit himself. He made the decision to
stay as far away from Trixie Dashwood as the geography of the room allowed. This one was bad news.

‘Gor, she’s a right little sweetheart, ain’t she, Burlesque?’

Amazed that anyone could describe Trixie Dashwood as a ‘sweetheart’, Burlesque looked around to check that Rivets hadn’t totally taken leave of his senses. It was then he realised that the object of the boy’s admiration wasn’t Trixie Dashwood but the utterly exquisite Chinese girl who – accompanied by Norma Williams – had just stepped into the room. She was indeed a real ‘sweetheart’, being small and slender – a little
too
slender for Burlesque’s taste; he liked his women to have a bit of meat on them – and transcendentally beautiful. The girl reminded Burlesque of an exotic bird that had flown …

He stopped: he didn’t do this sort of poetic, romantic shit. Just ask Odette.

‘Yus, she ain’t a bad looker,’ he observed. ‘Bit on the skinny side though.’

There was no reply; he was talking to himself. Rivets had vanished. Not that he had much time to think about the boy’s sudden disappearance, what with Odette dragging him across the room to meet and greet the newcomers.

It wasn’t until hugs and kisses and bows and names had been exchanged, the Chink bird called Dong E and Norma congratulated on their escape from the Forbidding City, and fresh drinks served that Rivets made a return appearance. At least Burlesque
thought
it was Rivets but he had to perform a double take to make sure. Incredibly, in the few minutes he’d been gone the boy had washed, combed his hair and put on a clean shirt. He looked almost respectable. He also looked very excited as he stood there hopping from one foot to the other waiting to be introduced.

Burlesque obliged. ‘This is Rivets, Femme Dong E, a friend of mine. Rivets, this is Femme Dong E.’

Rivets bobbed his head enthusiastically. ‘Dongie, eh? That’s a nice name. I don’t suppose your first name’s Ding by any chance, is it?’

For a second the girl seemed just a little confused, but then she gave Rivets a wonderful smile. ‘No, Rivets-san, like you, I have a name which sounds odd to foreigners.’

Rivets blushed, then stammered a reply. ‘Oh, I weren’t taking the piss or nuffink. I fink it’s a corkin’ name,’ and with that he pulled up a chair and shoved it and himself between Dong E and Burlesque. And as he did so, Burlesque’s nose told him that Rivets had also made quite liberal use of his special jar of
eau de Paris
. The boy smelt like a garden: flowery with a subtle undertow of compost.

Odette gave Burlesque a surreptitious wink and then leant her lips close to his ear. ‘
L’amour
,’ she whispered.

Yeah
, he silently agreed,
Rivets is a boy in love
.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire
, mused Norma as she gazed around the room. Oh, she was pleased to see her friends again, but the baleful presence of Trixie Dashwood had drained all the bounce out of her.

Maybe, she wondered, she hadn’t fully recovered from her ordeal in the sewers. Despite spending a night in bed and taking several long baths, she still had palpitations every time she thought about the horror of having been obliged to enter the sewers again.

Not that she’d been given any choice in the matter. Mata Hari – who, as Su Xiaoxiao had promised, had been waiting for her and Dong E when they’d escaped from the Forbidding City – had announced the sewers to be the only safe route out of Beijing. Even so it had taken all Norma’s will-power to stop herself panicking when she’d been sealed in that stinking,
claustrophobic darkness. But somehow she had managed to control her fears and now she was safe.

Well, safe as she could ever be in the Demi-Monde. Safe as she could ever be in the presence of Trixie Dashwood.

Norma had recognised Trixie immediately she’d entered the room. Even with her head shaved, she had a force about her that was unmistakable. In fact, despite the absence of all her wonderful blonde hair, she looked pretty much as Norma remembered her from Warsaw: angry, tired and dishevelled which, Norma supposed, was understandable given the recent fighting. The unfortunate thing was that she still had the same mad sparkle in her eyes.

‘My goodness, it’s our wayward Daemon,’ breathed an astonished-looking Trixie when she spotted Norma. ‘Now you’re the last person I thought I’d be bumping into here in the Coven. I thought you were dead.’

Desperate to remain as insouciant as she was able – Trixie Dashwood had always scared the bejeezus out of her – Norma gave the girl a broad smile and thrust out a hand. ‘It’s good to see you alive and well, Trixie. You too, Wysochi.’ The huge Pole standing at Trixie’s side bowed an acknowledgement and gave her one of his trademark off-kilter smiles. He, at least, seemed willing to be friendly. ‘And talking about premature announcements of death, I heard the same about you, that you were killed escaping from Warsaw.’

‘As you can see, I’m alive, Daemon.’

Daemon? Fuck, didn’t Trixie ever lighten up? Why did she have to be such a hard-ass?

‘I never suspected you would be so tenacious of life,’ Trixie continued, ‘I heard you’d been flushed down the sewers.’ She gave a morbid little laugh. ‘And I think, given the situation in the Coven, you’ll find it might have been better if you’d stayed flushed.’

‘No, all the sewers have done is given me a pathological aversion to shit.’

Or, more accurately, shits
.

Obviously sensing the frisson between the two girls, Su Xiaoxiao decided to play the mediator. ‘Norma is something of the hero of the hour, GeneralFemme Dashwood …’

GeneralFemme. My, my, Trixie has come up in the world
.

‘… as is Fresh Bloom Dong E.’ Here Su Xiaoxiao nodded towards the Chinese girl.

Norma was pleased to see that Dong E was smiling again; the death of Xi Kang had hit her hard and there were obviously other things troubling her, things presumably relating to the conversations she’d had with the NoN in the stable block when they were escaping the Forbidding City. But what these had been about Norma had no idea: her Chink hadn’t been good enough to understand what had been going down.

‘Norma succeeded in penetrating the Forbidding City,’ Su Xiaoxiao explained, ‘and escaping with a number of highly classified documents. These documents, GeneralFemme, are the reason I asked you to attend this meeting. The information contained in them behoves us to take dramatic action, dramatic action that requires the services of an army … of your army.’

With that Su Xiaoxiao took Trixie Dashwood by the arm, led her to her place at the conference table and then called the meeting to order, waving the nine men and women standing in the room to their chairs. ‘I wish to welcome GeneralFemme Trixiebell Dashwood and Major Feliks Wysochi to our meeting.’

‘You better make that Colonel Dashwood,’ grumbled Trixie. ‘I imagine that by now the Empress Wu has rescinded my appointment as head of the Covenite army.’

‘As you wish. Let it be
Colonel
Dashwood. I invited Colonel Dashwood and Major Wysochi here today as representatives of
the Warsaw Free Army which is fighting so bravely to deny the SS possession of Rangoon’s Blood Bank.’

Then, one by one Su Xiaoxiao went around the individuals seated around the table, introducing them to Trixie. ‘Norma Williams you know, Colonel Dashwood, but the others you may not. To Norma’s left is the brave nuFemme Dong E, who helped bring the secret files out of the Forbidding City. To her left are Rivets, Burlesque Bandstand and Odette Aroca, who together were founding members of the Normalist movement that did so much to discomfit the ForthRight’s occupation of the Quartier Chaud. And last, but by no means least, are the eminent cryptologist AcademicianNoN Ki Song and the evolutionist Gregor Mendel.’