The Dragons of Heaven (27 page)

“You're with the People's Heroes.”

“And you are spy of the Argent Corporation.” She dropped her arms to her sides and approached my hiding place. Stay and fight, or run and evade capture? But if I ran, where would I run to? And would Song Yulan be able to find me?

So, compromise. Stay and evade.

“I'm afraid you're mistaken. I broke off my affiliation with Argent many years ago.” I slid around to the other side of the wall after I'd spoken. A basic ruse, but it worked. Her attention was on where I had been.

“Liar. You arrived with one of their men. The flying one.”

That almost surprised me out of the shadows. Skyrocket? How did she know about him?

And did that mean he and Tsung had safely made it out of the Shadow Realms?

She rounded the corner, and I didn't dare ask. I snapped a kick out of the shadows, going for the back of her knee – on top of my usual aim for low casualties, I didn't want to offend the People's Heroes by permanently disabling one of their agents. Yangtze grunted and stumbled, but she didn't go down. It was like kicking a sack of rice. She just kind of… shifted.

Then she turned to face me.

Hell.

Yangtze swiped for me. I rolled under her arms. At least, that was the plan, but she spun about faster than I would have expected for someone of her size. She caught my ankle and dragged me out of my roll and into the park. I tried rotating my ankle out of her grip, but there was no gap between her fingers and thumb – her hand was so large, my ankle so thin in comparison, that her digits overlapped by a healthy bit. No freedom to be found there.

I kicked her with my free leg, but this time it was more like kicking a side of beef than a bag of rice. She grunted, and I ignored the pain of impacting an immovable object when I was nothing like an unstoppable force. She grabbed me above the knee with her other hand and choked up her grip, lifting me high above the ground. I twisted about, dangling by the one leg. My hat tumbled to the grass.

“You are a liar,” she said, shaking me. Her face swam in and out of view as I swung about. “And you are also not very smart.”

I was almost glad Song Yulan wasn't there to agree with the second bit. That would teach me not to listen. “So I have been informed on numerous occasions,” I said, hoping the guardian would arrive with that back-up. With the way the blood was rushing to my head, sooner would be better. “Now that we have found some common ground, I would very much appreciate it if you would set me down so we might talk.”

Yangtze laughed, a hearty alto that would have made Wagner weep. “I have nothing to say to you. You are the reason for this attack on China. We know of your alliance with the Shadow Dragons. We have your master trapped, and now we have you. Perhaps if I killed you, that would break this spell.”

She grabbed my other leg and pulled like she meant to tear me in twain. She was strong enough that I feared she might manage it. I curled up and grabbed at her wrist, trying to break her grip as she pried me into upside-down splits. Without any leverage and my body being gumbied into a shape it wasn't meant to take, my struggles were as effective as a fly pinned by a bully.

“Yangtze. We have our orders. Release Mr Masters.”

The strain on my inner-thighs eased as Yangtze stopped prying me apart and turned to the new speaker. “He will get away if I do.”

“No, he will not.”

I twisted to catch a glimpse of my savior, just in time to witness him fling a ribbon of paper at me. It hit like a floodlight. I flinched and squinted as the park was illuminated from all sides like Madison Square Gardens. There didn't seem to be any source to the light. It was just
there
. Sorcery. The People's Heroes were more comfortable with its use than their western counterparts. Damn. There would be no escaping into shadow now. Even my face was unshielded.

Unshielded, and probably beet-dark. It was hard to hear my captors' conversation for the ringing in my ears.

“Song Yulan got away.” Yangtze told the newcomer.

“Doesn't matter. Mr Mystic is the one we want. Put him down. You both look ridiculous.”

“He tried to kick me.” But she put me down. I lay on the grass for a moment, letting my circulation regain equilibrium. The other speaker picked up my hat and held it out to me. I sat up, taking the hat and settling it back on my head. I pulled the brim low. With the magical floodlights, it was impossible to coax even a wisp of a shadow to cover my face. I popped my collar in a vain attempt to make up the difference.

“My apologies for any discomfort, Mr Masters, but you really shouldn't have tried to kick Yangtze. You are the visitor here, after all.”

The man eschewed the dark suits of the other People's Heroes I'd seen, favoring instead a monk's garb: loose peasant pants, grass sandals, and a dun-colored short robe that was all folds. His legs bowed out in a gentle curve, and his head was shaved bald.

“You're the Commander?” Hard to imagine Song Yulan being afraid of this man, until I recalled the little strip of paper that had turned on the floodlights.

Monks were tricky like that.

The man laughed and helped me to my feet as a dark sedan pulled up to the stone archway. The alley was too narrow to open the doors anywhere else.

“No sir. I am Seven Lotus Petals Falling, the Incense Master for the PHC in Shanghai. But our commander is very eager to meet with you. Will you come quietly?”

“He will.” Yangtze gave me a look that said I'd better.

I dragged my feet all the way to the car, keeping my face buried in my collar. Between Yangtze and the floodlights, what choice did I have?

“I suppose that I will,” I said, ducking my head as I was helped into the car by the monk and the woman. Yangtze climbed in beside me. As we scraped our way down the alley and onto the busy streets, her hand closed around my wrist.

Who needed handcuffs when you had China's answer to Brunhilde?

O
nce free of
the monk's sorcery, I was able to coax forth my disguise of shadows. We drove past the cluster of hotels that lined the Bund, heading for the tunnel under the Huangpu. Traffic thinned to nothing as police diverted every car but ours. We came to the barricaded entrance to the tunnel and were waved through without being stopped. I glanced over my shoulder as we entered the falsely bright tunnel. The air compression, the white tiled curve of the walls, the brightness of the lights that emphasized just how constricting the tunnel was, all contributed to create a claustrophobic miasma. There were no other cars or noise to break up the impression that we were entering an inescapable labyrinth.

“Why close down the tunnels?” I asked, wondering if they'd done the same for the bridges. They were the main arteries for commerce between the Puxi and the Pudong. It seemed a new one was being built every year.

“Public safety,” Seven Lotus Petals Falling said. “The tunnels are unsafe, so nobody wants to use them.”

Unsafe? Or was that just the Party line? Control of the tunnels meant control of the city. I turned forward to ask the monk when Yangtze's hand squeezed around my wrist hard enough to make me wince.

“We have a problem,” she told Seven Lotus Petals Falling as the tunnel behind us glowed with a red-gold light. I shielded my eyes, disoriented for a moment. It looked like the setting sun catching the opening, but the sun had set already, and there was too much city and smog in the way.

Also, the glow was getting brighter.

“Drive faster,” Yangtze urged the driver. She strained against her seatbelt, as if that could add to our momentum. I was pressed back into my seat as the car surged faster. The driver's knuckles were white on the wheel.

“We can't outrun her,” Seven Lotus Petals Falling said, twisting around to look behind us. I turned as well, as much as Yangtze's grip would let me.

I couldn't look directly at the light. It blossomed in our wake like a fireball, overtaking us in a dizzying flash of dancing lights and shadows, and then surging ahead. It burst out of the tunnel and exploded into the road beyond. The car swayed as the driver flinched and covered his eyes.

I pressed forward alongside Yangtze, both of us straining against our seatbelts. The light had resolved into a dragon, red and gold and longer than any of the puppets I'd seen in New Year's parades. Her serpentine coils blocked the rounded tunnel exit. She'd taken out most of the tunnel lights with her passage, leaving her the only bright spot at the end of our darkened path.

“She'll move,” the monk told the driver. “Don't stop.”

“No! Don't hurt her!” Like hell was I going to let him play chicken with the dragon blocking the tunnel's mouth, but we were too close to stop, and tile walls curved up on either side of us.

Gripping the edge of my seat, I pulled the entire car through to the Shadow Realms. The engine sputtered a quick, noisy death. The car fishtailed. A bump in the terrain that hadn't been there a few moments before flipped us. What should have been a long coast to stopping became a whirligig of terror. Rolling world, dark sky, and darker land, and Yangtze's face wide-eyed and screaming. Metal groaned, safety glass shattered over us in a spray. My head was jerked about on my neck, my legs flopping in front of me, though I kept my grip on the seat. I closed my eyes until the car settled.

Before I could get my bearings, someone grabbed me by the lapels and pulled me back into the light of the world.

“I've got her. Let's get out of here.” I knew that voice.

“Tsung?” Impossible.

And then another voice, so heart-breakingly familiar that I forgot all about Tsung. “Get the others.”

“We don't have time to–”

“Get them. I'm not leaving them in that place.”

I opened my eyes as David Tsung tore a wound between the worlds, using the shadows cast by the dragon's light. He pulled out Yangtze, the monk, and the driver, all still dazed from the crash.

Red-gold claws clasped around Tsung and myself. The dragon took to the air before my captors could collect themselves. I shrieked and held on for dear life. Shanghai passed below us, the Huangpu River a dark strip between the lights of Pudong and Puxi. My wig whipped about my face. I'd lost my hat somewhere in the crash. I tore the wig free and shoved it into my pocket. Above me, the dragon's body caught the lights off the Bund. Looking up at her gave me vertigo. I swallowed and closed my eyes until I felt solid ground under my feet. She'd landed in a familiar garden with fox statues lurking behind every bush. A cobbled terrace led up to a temple.

Her whiskers quivered as she gave me the draconic equivalent of a grin.

“Mei Shen?” I must have hit my head in the crash. But no, I'd seen her
before
I'd ripped the car into the Shadow Realms.

“Hello, Mother,” the dragon chirped. She folded in on herself and became a pretty teenage girl in jeans, a red top, and gold-spangled chains. She hurled herself at me, and I met her with a crushing hug.

“I think Father was right.” She sniffled into my shoulder. We were both crying. “I do get my ability to find trouble from you.”

T
hen

Idylls are measured by moments of difficulty, and difficulty never came to Jian Huo's realm unless it was brought from the outside. A dozen years passed, and I became teacher as well as student, filling in certain necessary cultural gaps in my children's education. Good thing I could recite
The Princess Bride
from memory. Jian Huo claimed their brilliance was due to their draconic heritage, and he was probably right, but I cited my genetic contribution anyway. And they were brilliant. Lung Mian Zi Zun could challenge his father at
wei-qi
before he could walk, and Lung Mei Shen Mi was constantly testing the boundaries of how much trouble she could get into.

They were never sick, rarely cried or fussed, and the time passed without note beyond the usual markers of raising a family: first words, first steps, first accidental transformation into a big serpenty critter. I woke every morning surrounded by a dark curtain of sandalwood-scented hair and pestered by laughing imps. I spent my days in loving domesticity. Each evening I told my children tales of heroes and villains, just as my grandfather had done with me, and shooed their nurse away to tuck them in myself. Every night my senses were set aflame by my dragon-lover, and I slept sated and content in his arms.

It was those same arms, more or less, that cradled us now as we soared high above the spiritual reflection of Shanghai. Of all of us, I took the most geektastic joy from flying,
whoo-hooing
like a madwoman. Mian Zi and Mei Shen couldn't fly far in their dragon forms, and they found being carried, compounded by my unbridled enthusiasm, embarrassing as only soon-to-be teenagers would. Even so, Mian Zi smiled into the wind, and Mei Shen laughed as rain spattered her face. Jian Huo thrummed with a deeper, quieter sort of contentment, and my whooping was cut short on a breath-catching moment of intense happiness. A heroine in a story might have recognized this as a warning of pending disaster, but we'd been so happy for so long that I'd ceased expecting anything to go wrong. I should have remembered that dragons think of time on a different scale.

We landed in the courtyard of a temple. Jian Huo's arrival had been preceded by a rainstorm, which cleared away the Shanghai smog into something breathable. The air was still thick and warm, but it smelled clean, and it was heavy with moisture. The gardens rolled out before the temple with studied simplicity, like a lady's robe dropped at her feet but not yet kicked away. Statues of slender foxes, one paw raised just so, dotted the grounds. Tiny shrines peeked out of grottoes and nestled between tree roots. It was less like a temple, more like a den. I spied a flash of white standing near the door of the temple – Jiu Wei, greeting Song Yulan and the hulking form of Fang Shih. I grinned, anticipating much teasing from him about my grasp of spirit speech… or lack thereof.

Jian Huo transformed while still holding the children, setting his squirming passengers down so they could rush forward to meet those coming to greet us. Shui Yin, as roguish and carefree as when I'd first met him, bent to swoop up an adoring Mei Shen. Mian Zi cast a disapproving glance at his sister's outrageous flirtations before greeting Si Wei with a proper little bow. The fox girl greeted him back with equal solemnity, but her fingers plucked at the brocade edges of her sleeves, and the back of her robes twitched. Squeezing Jian Huo's hand, I smiled my greeting to the couple.

“Shui Yin, it's good to see you again. Si Wei, you look lovely.” And like she might snap any moment. I shot Shui Yin a glare that he missed because he was busy tickling his niece.

“Jian Huo, why don't you and the children go with your brother. Si Wei and I need to catch up. Jiu Wei can greet any latecomers.” I nodded to the ancient fox-spirit who stood at the doors of the temple. She nodded back and waved me off. Before anyone could protest, I grabbed Si Wei's arm and dragged her into the gardens.

“Whew.” I collapsed on a bench and motioned for her to join me. She did, looking nonplussed. Whirlwind Missy, at your service. “You look almost as awful as I felt during the
Zi Gong Hu
.”

“I do?” Slender fingers flew to check her perfectly-coifed russet hair. If I took myself more seriously, I would have been insulted. Stupid non-aging friends being prettier than me. I chuckled away any jealousy.

“No. Not at all. You look perfect. You just seemed anxious. I figured you could use a break before you found a convenient bell-tower.”

She sighed and slumped. Since I'd never seen her with anything other than perfect poise, my alarm-meter jumped to Code Mauve.

“I should have no fear of this,” she said. “I've proven myself. I've passed all the trials. I've done this before!” She slapped her palm against stone, then sighed and closed her eyes. “Shui Yin says that I am being silly and just want more attention–”

“Whoa. He said that? That is
way
out of line.” I glanced around, hoping for his smirking face to appear so I could smack him one. She opened her mouth to defend the rogue, but I silenced her by taking her hands and given them a stern shake.

“Si Wei, it's all right to be nervous. You have every reason to be nervous. Not because you don't deserve this or because anything's going to go wrong. You do and it's not. It's just that the last time you didn't have anything to prove. You'd done the time, passed the trials, and it was all gravy. This time, people are watching you. Maybe they haven't questioned you for a century, but this is like a big neon sign reminding them that you used to be dangerous. They're going to be sizing you up, looking for signs they missed last time. It sucks, but there it is. But you know what?”

“What?” Her butt wasn't doing the four-tailed mambo anymore. Maybe she'd just needed reassuring that she wasn't crazy.

“I'm not looking at you like that. And since I'm the most important person here, that's all that matters.”

“You?” She sputtered at my outrageous claim, a grin tugging at her lips. “I think there might be some who would argue with that.”

“Let them.” I squared my shoulders and lifted my nose. “I'm
Lung Xin Niang
…” I deflated. “OK, well, provisionally until Lung Tian unbunches his panties. Just give it another few centuries.”

She shook her head, but her willow-strong posture had returned. She was looking lovelier and more composed by the second. This was a good thing because I had some curiosities that needed sating.

“So, this whole gaining your fifth tail and becoming Wu Wei… is it, like, a surgical procedure, or do we actually get to play ‘pin the tail on the
huxian
'?”

I didn't even try to duck her swipe.

F
or all Si Wei's
anxiety, the ceremony went off without a hitch. It was simple and beautiful, without a lot of the elaborate pomp I'd come to expect from the various traditional Chinese rituals I'd seen. Russet-furred foxes and russet-haired women filled the temple. Many of them wore masks, and most of them wore robes of various shades of russet silk. If I squinted just right I could make out the blur of white-tipped tails. I stopped squinting when Jian Huo reprimanded our daughter for doing the same thing. Apparently it was rude. Who knew?

Jiu Wei stood out in robes of palest cream, her silver hair flowing free around her. She anointed Si Wei with water from a silver basin, while Si Wei's sister-foxes disrobed her, replacing the russet silk with robes a shade lighter. Then Jiu Wei led her into a chamber beyond the main temple, all the fox-women following behind. The guests were left to our own devices.

“That's it?” Mei Shen looked around, confused. The ceremony was over before she could start fidgeting, which said a lot about its brevity.

“No.” Mian Zi's response held the all-knowing disgust that only a sibling could muster. “The ceremony continues for the rest of the night, with each fox maiden saluting Si Wei – now Wu Wei – and bringing her to her pleasure in turn.”

The hall had emptied out, so there was only our little group left to gape at my son in shock.

Shui Yin collected himself the quickest. “R–r– really?” he sputtered.

“Nuh-uh,” was Mei Shen's skeptical rebuttal.

“Where did you learn that?” Jian Huo's tone, curious but not surprised, clued me to the possibility that all-night lesbian fox orgies might not be a factoid that my son had pulled out of nowhere.

I tamped down on my appalled shock and went for dire motherly suspicion. “Yes. Where
did
you learn that?”

Mian Zi shrugged. “Everyone knows that.”

I got the impression that his interest in the topic had only ever been academic, not prurient. He slid off the bench and followed his sister, who had already grown bored with the conversation and was running toward the gardens. That left the three adults glancing between each other, and the formerly innocuous-looking doorway at the rear of the temple, with renewed interest. Shui Yin still sported a shell-shocked expression, and I couldn't help but smirk.

“I didn't know that.” He turned to us, “Did you know that?”

“Of course.” Jian Huo's smirk matched my own. He set a hand at the small of my back to escort me out to the gardens. Shui Yin was an amateur rogue compared to his brother. “Didn't you hear Mian Zi? Everyone knows that.”

I
t took forever
to coax the children to sleep. The day had been a long one, what with the excitement of the flight and the requirement to be on their best behavior. Their eyes were over-bright and their imaginations too active. Their latest ploy – after the usual requests for water, snacks, stories, songs, windows open, windows closed, and questions about lesbian fox orgies that I was
not
going to answer – was to tell me that there was something shifty about the nurse Jiu Wei had provided.

“She was clipping her toenails just before you came in. I heard her. She's inviting ghosts to come and kill us in our sleep,” Mei Shen said. I didn't want to discount the superstition, but I also knew my daughter's penchant for tall-tales and exaggeration.

“Was she?” I pretended concern but glanced at Mian Zi, who ran every statement he made through a rigorous process of logic.

“Maybe,” he hemmed, trying to give his sister the benefit of the doubt. “I was nearly asleep. But Mei Shen wouldn't lie about something like that. And the nurse is foreign. Who knows what primitive magic she might have?”

My son, the budding racist. I was going to have to work on that cultural elitism – not easy, when all the spirits he met were one step away from worshipping the twins as godlings. Still, it was odd that a foreign spirit should be taking care of them. I stole a quick glance at the nurse, who sat in a chair near the brazier, carving a bit of wood with a dull-looking knife.

“Excuse me?” The old woman glanced up when I spoke to her. Sure enough, her apple-granny features had a distinct Western cast. “How long have you worked in Jiu Wei's house?”

“Not long my Lady,” the old woman responded. Points against her for that, but at least she was honest about it, “Si – Wu Wei brought me here to care for your children. We are old friends.” And opinion swung back in the nurse's favor. The fox-girl would never bring harm to me or my children. I nodded thanks to the old woman and turned back to Mei Shen, whose chin was jutted out as though her point had been proven.

“There, you see! You see! She said ‘si'. Everyone knows that is an ill-omen. It means death.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Everyone knows that was Wu Wei's name until a few hours ago. It's not her fault that the number four is ill-omened.” Maybe my first instincts were correct, and this was another bedtime-resistance ploy. Mian Zi was already out, his serious little frown softened into a snoring rosebud. However, soothing Mei Shen's worry would be no small task. I considered for a moment, then reached into the folds of my robe and pulled out a package wrapped in red, green, and gold silk.

“Here.” I placed the package on her lap. “Open it. I was going to give them to Wu Wei as a gift, but I don't think she'd mind if you wore them tonight. They'll protect you from ghosts and death-omens and evil nannies.”

Mei Shen gasped at the pair of carved jade combs in the package. I took one from her and fixed it in her hair. She kept the other clenched in her fist. “There. Is that better?”

Mei Shen nodded. It was grudging, but already her eyes were unfocusing. For all her worry and resistance, she was as exhausted as her brother.

“Good. Then sleep tight. And don't worry, Maybug. I would never let anything harm you.” I tucked the covers around her chest, kissed her on the forehead, and bid the nurse goodnight on my way out.

The hallways of Jiu Wei's temple were unfamiliar, but I managed to find my way from the nursery back to our rooms. I found Jian Huo there with Shui Yin, who had decided that he was not cool with the all-night lesbian fox orgy portion of the ceremony. He was deep in his cups and declaring a pox on all red-haired temptresses.

“I hope that doesn't include me. I'd hate to have a pox. Of course, if I'm not included then I think my feelings will be hurt. Don't I rate high enough to be a temptress anymore?”

Shui Yin glared at me for several moments before grabbing his wine bottle and stalking off, muttering that know-it-all human red-haired temptresses were the worst of the lot. I laughed. Tormenting him was such fun.

“Did the children go down all right?” Jian Huo pulled me onto the low-backed couch. I nestled into his arms. “I was on my way to join you, but my brother insisted on stopping by to inform me what a trial fox-women are – as if I didn't know myself – and how lucky I am to have met a sweet and biddable woman. The wine seems to be affecting his memory.”