The Dragons of Heaven (24 page)

“If I say I believe you, will you stop torturing the concept of metaphor?” Jian Huo asked. Si Wei sighed her relief, and Shui Yin looked impressed. “What happened is past, in any case. We are now left to determine how to get you out of this challenge.”

“Uh… no. We need to figure out how I'm going to pass it.” All three of them opened their mouths to argue, so I struggled to a sitting position. Note to self: nothing stops arguments faster than a pregnant woman flopping around on a backless couch.

“Lung Pan said some pretty nasty things, but she only said what everyone else is thinking, including all of your siblings, except for Shui Yin.”

“And that is only because I find thinking to be very strenuous.” At Jian Huo's glare, Shui Yin pointed at me. “What? She's the only one who gets to be inappropriately funny?”

Ignoring my new apprentice in comedy, I took Jian Huo's hands in mine. “Look, I know that this is ridiculous. I know that I am worthy to be
Lung Xin Niang
. I know this because I know you, and I know that you would never ally yourself with someone who wasn't worthy.” I spared a brief glance at Si Wei. “I know that I can be graceful and witty and honorable.” I glared at Shui Yin, and he closed his mouth on whatever smart-ass remark he'd been about to make. “And I know I don't have to prove it to Lung Tian or Lung Pan. I just have to prove it to everyone else, and then Tian's ‘objective arbitration' won't mean squat.”

Jian Huo considered this, then rose and sat beside me. “Very well, what do you need?”

Releasing his hands, I motioned the others to pull up some chairs. “Well, first I need to know what kinds of challenges I'll be facing, and then we'll need to figure out how I'm gonna pass them – and by passing, I mean nail them to the ground and dance on their dusty remains.”

“Are you sure that you can do this?” The words were from Shui Yin, but they all looked varying degrees of skeptical.

“Are you kidding?” I flashed them my most brazen grin. “With ‘Team Missy' at my back, Lung Tian doesn't have a prayer.”

I
didn't have a prayer
.

I thrust open the door of my room and stripped off the complicated
hanfu
that ‘Team Missy' had insisted I would need to wear for the first challenge. They underestimated how much Lung Tian wanted to grind me into little humiliated pieces. Rather than proving my grace through some “easy” trial like catching and releasing a live butterfly with chopsticks – Jian Huo and Shui Yin's pick – or writing some complicated calligraphy – Si Wei's choice – Lung Tian had challenged me to a dragon dance.

Which meant I was supposed to fight him. In my condition. Hence the quick costume change and the raging fury.

Unlike my teammates, I had expected something like this. Maybe not this extreme, but I didn't expect Lung Tian to pull any punches simply because I had a belly the size of a beachball. I let them talk me down because I trusted their knowledge of Lung Tian better than my own judgment. Now I knew better, and I knew that today would be even more difficult than we'd planned for the night before. I yanked my modified shaolin robes out of the wardrobe. I needed to calm down and center if I wanted to get through this. That's when the wetness whooshed down between my legs.

Oh, you've got to be kidding me.

I sank back against the wardrobe, staring at the spreading wet patch on the floor as though wishing would make it go away. It remained, a straw on the camel-high pile of problems I was facing. Was I allowed to call things off on account of having to give birth? I suspected Lung Tian would just love it if I asked.

One of the main problems about living with an exiled dragon in a pocket spirit realm in the middle of China was that the pre-natal care sucked and birthing information was non-existent. Television and movies hadn't prepared me for the realities of being pregnant; maybe that meant they were similarly misleading about the labor part. I centered my chi and did a quick body check, trusting my own senses over what I'd been conditioned to expect. I didn't feel much different. I'd been having back spasms since the night before, but nothing I hadn't already decided I could cope with. It wouldn't be any worse than fighting through the pain of an injury, and I'd done that before.

Fine. I could do this. But if that bastard tried to make me run a footrace against a horse, I'd figure out a way to curse his family line with birthing pains. I had precedent on my side.

Taking a deep, centering breath, I cleaned myself up and donned my simple trousers and robe. I spent the walk back down to the garden going through the mental exercises necessary to make sure my chi was aligned. That in itself was a revelation. I sensed the energies flowing around my children. They were composed entirely of determination – probably to get out. I wove those energies into my own, bolstering the places where I felt weak. By the time I got to the top of the stairs, I was able to acknowledge and let go of the pain that blossomed with every back spasm. I doubted I could win, but maybe I could hold my own.

The assembled spirits watched me waddle down the stairs to the garden with varying levels of interest and excitement. The older dragons looked on with polite interest, but Lung Pan glared as if I would forget her dislike. Shui Yin gave me a surreptitious thumbs-up – somebody needed to take that boy in hand – and Si Wei gave an encouraging nod.

Lung Tian awaited me in the dragon circle, but before I could enter, Shanghai's guardian strode into the ring.

“This is preposterous,” Song Yulan snapped. She shot a glare over her shoulder at Jian Huo. “Grandfather, if you will not stop this, then I will.”

Grandfather?

I did a bit of glaring myself. Jian Huo folded his hands in his sleeves, impervious to all the dirty looks he was getting. “I have already tried to dissuade Missy from this path. It is her choice.”

Song Yulan arched a brow at this side-stepping, but she must have known it was pointless to argue with Jian Huo when he was in hand-sleeve mode.

Grandfather?

“Then I will fight for her,” Song Yulan said, lifting her chin as she faced Lung Tian again.

Whoa. I abandoned my glaring to step into the circle. “I can fight for myself.”

She didn't break her staring contest to answer. “You're in no condition to fight.”

Another cramp crawled its way from the small of my back around to my abdomen, making it harder for me to argue with her, mostly because I was trying to breathe through the urge to scream.

Lung Tian covered my silence. “This is a test of her fitness, not yours, Guardian. She must fight for herself.”

“If I were her champion–”

“You are not.” Lung Tian had to raise his voice over the collective gasp from the crowd. “Nor would it speak well of either of you if you agreed to such a compact for so frivolous a reason.”

Frivolous. He thought sticking up for a pregnant woman and her unborn kids was frivolous?

What an ass.

But the cramp had passed, and I wanted to get started before another one came. I touched Song Yulan's arm. “Thank you. Really. But I'm OK. I need to see this through.”

She glared at all three of us – Lung Tian, Jian Huo, and myself – before throwing up her hands and returning to her place among the lesser spirits and guardians.

I stepped into the place that she'd abandoned, facing off against Lung Tian. I was like Ralph Macchio standing up to the Cobra Kai bullies. Wax on, wax off, baby.

“Let's do this.”

Lung Tian did not leave me much time to think after our initial bow. He slipped into Tiger, assaulting me with a barrage of strong blows and kicks. Given his superior strength and my condition, I didn't want any of those blows hitting, so I tried to flow like water around them, meeting his Tiger with Crane.

I danced aside from his strikes, using his own momentum against him, spinning out of his way so that he was left staring at the circle's edge, me standing behind him. I tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned to face me, I gave him my biggest, shit-eating grin. I heard several snickers from the crowd. Crane, with her innovation and sense of humor, was my best and favorite form, as I imagined Tiger was his. As long as he kept coming at me with fiery directness, I could keep away from him with watery creativity. He switched to Snake.

Snake was about patience: the wait and the strike. Lung Tian slid around the circle, waiting for me to exhibit a weakness. I matched his movements with my own stalking pace, not Tiger, but Leopard. I had to move us out of these forms. If I had another back cramp, it would provide the opening he was looking for. I attacked with a series of my own quick strikes to distract his analysis of my form. I wasn't strong enough to gain any ground, but as long as he was in Snake, I didn't need to be. I just needed to keep him off kilter so that he couldn't recognize that my cramps were coming with growing frequency and pain. I got the feeling that he didn't have much patience for the earth-bound Snake. He switched forms again.

That left me in a bind. Earth generates metal, and the form that followed Snake was Dragon. That meant that in order to overcome him I'd have to become the fiery Tiger, and I didn't have the strength or the skill to beat him as Tiger. Instead, I transitioned to Dragon as well, figuring that if I could outwait him, I could transition back to Crane.

We stood in the center of the circle, our breathing deep and meditative. I was banking on him being more impatient than I was, on him wanting to kick my ass, and on the hope that I could transition to Crane before he could get a blow in as Tiger. What I had forgotten to bank on was that I was still in labor.

The muscles of my spine twitched in the beginnings of another spasm, this one much worse than the previous ones; it rippled from the small of my back all the way around to my abdomen, stronger than the worst menstrual cramp I'd ever had. I closed my eyes against it. Lung Tian transitioned to Tiger and lunged at me, but I'd dropped to my knees from the pain. His kick swept over my head, ruffling my wispies. I opened my eyes to see Lung Tian blinking at me in surprise.

“You yield?”

Now that the cramp had passed, I could think again. From the outside, it must have looked like I was conceding the contest.

Opportunist that I was, I nodded. “I do. I have seen the end of this contest. You are faster and stronger and more skilled than me. You would have struck me before I could have changed forms. There is no grace in drawing out a losing conflict, therefore I yield to you.” I didn't add that I didn't need to win the fight in order to win the contest. I hoped the implication was clear.

Lung Tian's lips thinned; the muscles in his forearms bunched and unbunched, but there was no way he could gracefully continue when I had yielded. He nodded and stalked out of the circle. “The next contest will take place in the pagoda.”

I struggled to rise, and I found myself surrounded by friendly hands offering their help. Jian Huo lifted me to my feet. His jaw clenched; the family resemblance to Lung Tian was strong.

“This needs to end. Song Yulan was right. You are in no condition to be fighting him. You are in no condition for any of these contests.”

If I had been considering telling any of them that I was in labor, Jian Huo's words stopped me. He was two seconds away from ending the contest and throwing all of his siblings out. I couldn't let that happen.

I squeezed his hand. “It's fine, Jian Huo. The worst part is over. I doubt that the tests of wit or honor are going to involve a lot of physical exertion.” Aside from the physical exertion of labor, but I kept that thought to myself.

I took Jian Huo's silence as concession.

He led me to the pagoda, where, as “Team Missy” had successfully predicted, Lung Tian had set up a game of
wei-qi
. I couldn't beat him. In all my time here I'd never come close to beating Jian Huo, and he was the bookish sibling. Lung Tian was the tactician. The best I could hope for was to acquit myself competently. As I took my seat at the table, Lung Tian threw the wrench.

“A person of true wit does not fill the air with incessant chatter. Therefore, you will remain silent during our game.”

It was a not-so-complimentary testament to how quickly our guests had come to know me that Lung Tian's caveat caused everyone to go quiet.

In the pin-dropping silence, Si Wei's whisper was all the more audible: “She's doomed.”

I glared at the fox-maiden, who spared me an apologetic grimace before going back to looking worried. Lips deliberately pursed, I nodded at Lung Tian, and we began to play.

The game lasted for over an hour, during which my contractions grew worse. I timed them by our moves, or rather my moves, since my opponent never paused to think more than a few moments before making his own. I assume that he intended for the hardest part of the game to be my required silence, but given that my contractions came more often and more painfully, it was easier for me than anyone would have guessed. The most difficult thing was controlling my breathing so that I didn't look like I was in unbelievable agony.

He trounced me. By the end, however, he was once again seething in fury. I had managed to remain silent during the entire game despite his many comments and taunts, most of which I was too preoccupied to hear. With a final decisive move he won the game, but he didn't look happy about it. He just glared at me and gestured for the game to be removed.

“Once again you have lost.”

I glanced at the servants removing the game, not speaking until they were out of sight. “I have lost the game. Whether I have lost the contest is a different matter to be determined, and one that I would imagine cannot be decided until all the challenges are met.”

His jaw worked, but he nodded his assent to this and forged ahead. “The third challenge will be one of honor. I will tell a tale of my most honorable moment.”