The Conclave of Shadow (5 page)

If Jack didn't have the chops to find Mei Shen, then he definitely wouldn't be able to find out where the Chinese delegation was staying or put me in contact with them. And I didn't think Argent would be forthcoming. However, they weren't the only ones Mian Zi would have had to work with to make this visit possible. “Right. I think I've got my next step, then.” I downed the rest of my tea, even though it was still a fair way to scalding.

“Okay. You going to share with the rest of the class?”

“Nope. I'm going to find me the teacher.”

I
borrowed
a hoodie and left Jack's the way I usually did – by rooftop, under the cover of darkness. Since it wasn't yet noon, I had to make the darkness myself. The gloom imparted by the fog made it easier. I crossed rooftops to the end of the row of houses and slipped down a drainpipe, sauntering toward Russian Hill as easy as you please.

Two local news vans were parked in front of Mystic Manor when I got home. They usually came out whenever Mr Mystic hit the news, trawling for B-roll. I diverted down the back alley to avoid being caught in my borrowed jammies.

Shimizu was out, our bottom floor in-law empty. I scrawled her a quick note and didn't bother poking upstairs to check in with the other housemates. With the possible exception of Patrick, our resident grad student and pothead, none of them knew about my secret double life. They had no reason to be concerned that I was involved in last night's attack. The only thing I'd find upstairs was the usual grumbling about the media surveillance.

It was a relief to be back in my own clothes – oxblood docs, leggings, an overlong button-down that
wasn't
covered in glittery Disney princesses. I ran my head under the tap and brushed out the worst of the kinks. Wet, it just about matched my docs. I've trailed so far behind on fashion that I practically set it again. I retrieved my cell phone – Missy's cell phone – and sent a cryptic text to Abby:
You owe me
. Then I grabbed a coat and scarf, and headed for Chinatown.

San Francisco's an odd conglomeration of twenty cities mashed into one seven square-mile area. The fog curling around the northern shore of the peninsula nudged up against Russian Hill, but it didn't follow me into Chinatown. By the time I hit Broadway, the afternoon was clear and warm enough to make me question the need for my coat. I wasn't fooled. Another half mile or half hour and I could be in soup again. Gotta love microclimates.

The Chinatown streets were relatively empty of tourist traffic. Tourism had nosedived in the wake of the New Wall crisis, everyone afraid that another set of barriers might go up and trap them in Chinatown, but it had been slowly recovering. I suspected last night's attack had squelched that small resurgence. You could taste it in the air, the renewed tension, more enervating than any fog. A few shopkeepers made a halfhearted attempt to lure me into their emporiums, but they backed off in what I suspected was relief when I waved them off in Cantonese.

If I needed any more indication that all was not right with the world, I got it in the form of the CLOSED sign on the door of the Dragon's Pearl.

I slipped round back and was relieved to see that the kitchen-side door was still open. The scents of five-spice and sesame oil wafted out, chasing away the rank alleyway smells of sweet rotting garbage and sour urine. I nodded at a few regulars on their way out. So, the Pearl wasn't open for tourists, but Doris was still feeding the locals. And more likely providing a safe center for them to come and share news, comfort, and concerns.

I bypassed the kitchen and headed up the narrow back stairway to the second floor.

Johnny Cho was in the middle of his open class. Students of all ages and a variety of backgrounds – mostly Chinese, but also Korean and a few
laowai
like me – faced off in sparring pairs. With his bleached-and-dyed hair – fire red and purple these days – he might look like an escapee from FanimeCon, but there wasn't a better sifu in Chinatown. Johnny had to have noticed me coming in, but he paid me no mind. He passed between the rows of students offering correction and encouragement.

I frowned at Johnny's back as I pulled off my boots and stuffed them in one of the few open shoe cubbies. He was never this nice to me in our training sessions. My corrections usually came with my cheek pressed to the mat and his knee pressed into my spine. Encouragement was provided by not wanting to end up with a mat burn permanently reddening my cheeks.

I knelt by the mat as the class progressed, watching. Learning. If Johnny was feeling ornery, he'd test me on one of the forms he was reviewing.

I cultivated patience as the class ended and the students dove in to their various cleanup duties, sweeping the mat, cleaning the mirror and the windows looking out onto the street. In pairs and threes they finished up their chores and drifted out. It seemed like every damn one of them needed to talk to Johnny, and Johnny seemed in no hurry to move them along. Finally, the last student – a teen boy with more bone than muscle – bowed at the edge of the mat before shoving on his shoes and
kwoon
jacket and pounding down the stairs to catch up with his friends.

Johnny snapped his towel at me to get my attention. “Took you long enough to come by.”

Whatever patience I'd cultivated fled. I hadn't slept enough to put up with this nonsense. “Excuse me for being in Argent custody all night.”

Johnny wiped his face, stepped off the mat, bowed, and tossed the damp towel in the laundry bin. “And you came here looking to take it out on someone?”

“I came here looking for my kids.”

Johnny sat in lotus, knees nearly touching mine. Like Jack, he'd only learned about Mei Shen and Mian Zi after my return – my second return – from China, but we hadn't talked about them. I was pretty sure he was pissed at me for keeping certain details of my first trip a secret. If having it out now with Johnny was the price I had to pay to make sure my kids were safe… sure. I'd pay that. This silent staring contest, on the other hand…

“I know you must know where Mian Zi is, at least. He would have had to pay his respects to you when he arrived. If not for himself, then for his people.” Mian Zi had taken over the People's Heroes, China's state-sponsored version of Argent. With a population of over a billion and a culture not as steeped in rationalist dogma, China had a respectable pool of gifted individuals to draw on. Only the best made it into the People's Heroes, but even the best owed respect to the Masters who predated China's Mao-induced surge into modernity. Like the City Guardians. Like Johnny.

“He did. Two days ago. He was supposed to move on to New York today.”

I groaned and ran my nails over my scalp. It still ached from a night in braids and wig. “Do you know where they were staying?” I couldn't believe that Mian Zi had moved on already. Not after last night's attack. Not when all the action was here.

Johnny looked down at the floor, then back at me, mouth twisted in an odd smile. “You really can be dense sometimes, Masters.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but shut it at his next question: “Why didn't you tell me about them? Three years you've been back, and I know something gutted you in China, but… kids? With one of the Nine?”

“Surprise,” I muttered. I hadn't said anything because I'd wanted to avoid this very conversation. Even after three years, the pain of walking away from Jian Huo and my kids…

I couldn't look at Johnny. I dreaded the question I knew was coming.

“And you left them?”

I sagged in on myself, folded my knees up so I could hug my legs and rest my chin on them. Johnny didn't say
after Mitchell left you
? He didn't have to. That thought had dogged me for three years. Part of the reason I'd taken on my grandfather's mantle was to escape the realization that when shit got too hard for me to cope, I'd done the same.

Or maybe I just thought that if I could understand my grandfather and why he'd left me, then it would make leaving my kids not so bad.

“It… wasn't the same. They had their father.” I studied my twisting fingers as though they were the most interesting thing in the world. “And it wasn't like it was easy for me. But I couldn't stay. Not after…”

“Mei Shen says you left without saying goodbye.”

I lifted my chin. “When?”

Johnny lifted one shoulder. “We hang out sometimes to play Kingdom Hearts. Don't change the subject.”

“Well, when you learn that the man you loved used you as a walking baby incubator, let's see you make good life choices,” I snapped.

“When you have kids, you can't afford to make bad life choices.”

“Thanks for the free advice.”

“And you didn't tell me. I thought we were… and you didn't tell me. I could have helped. I could have reached out to them and made it easier. For all of you.”

I hated Johnny the most when he was right. I hugged myself and let out a shaky breath. “So what do I do now?”

Johnny rose to his feet and held out a hand to help me up. “Accept that you messed up and that your kids have every right to be pissed at you. And go downstairs.”

I took his hand. “Downstairs?”

“Like I said. You can be dense. Can you imagine Doris Han closing her restaurant for anything less than a State visit?”

I
would have dashed
downstairs with bootlaces trailing, but Johnny made me take the time to do them up proper. He said his insurance didn't cover broken necks in the stairwell.

The kitchen staff – half of them part of the extended Han clan – barely looked up from their steamers and fryers when I hurried through. However, the two agents at the door to the dining room stopped me cold.

“Private function,” one of them said, holding me firmly by the shoulder in a grip that could easily dislocate with the proper application of weight and leverage. I tensed, ready to down him, but Johnny came up behind me and tapped the back of the fellow's hand like we were sparring students.

“It's okay, Franz. She's with me.”

The agent released me and let Johnny lead me past. I looked back at the two men – both definitely Chinese.

“Franz?” I asked Johnny.

“One of them got uppity about me being Korean, so I've been calling all of them that. Annoys the hell out of them.”

I stifled a chuckle. “Johnny, don't ever change.”

The dining room of the Dragon's Pearl was an open space that hadn't been redecorated since some time in the mid twentieth century. Red dominated – carpet, drapes, upholstery. The chairs were flocked gold, the table cloths a startlingly crisp white, and all the wood was dark and heavily carved. And none of it mattered. Folks didn't come to the Pearl for its decor.

The tables in the main room were placed together as closely as Doris could get them and still allow the dim sum carts to pass. She refused to get rid of the carts and go to table service the way so many places did these days. But today, all those tables were empty. Crisp. Set. Waiting. Empty.

I headed for the private banquet room that Doris only opened for New Year's and family birthdays. Two more agents stood at the doorway, but I didn't need Johnny's help getting past them. Doris was personally setting out dishes in front of a lone figure. He spotted me and sent the agents and Doris away with a softly spoken command.

Johnny waylaid a confused Doris and led her back toward the kitchen, closing the doors to give my son and me some privacy.

Mian Zi stood at the far side of a large, round banquet table, the sort that usually got crammed with people at weddings. He'd eschewed the Mao suit he'd worn in Shanghai in favor of a more Western style, like his uncle, but his hair was still long like his father's. I'd grown used to Mei Shen's blunt-cut bob and skinny jeans. The juxtaposition of inhumanly long hair and a western tailored suit sat oddly on Mian Zi.

“Where's Mei Shen?” I blurted.

“She is safe.” My question had been in English, but Mian Zi answered me in Mandarin. I couldn't tell if he meant it as a reprimand or if it was simply a product of his ethnic bias. Whatever the case, the reassurance chased away the worst of my fears. No matter their ideological differences, Mian Zi wouldn't be taking time out for dim sum if his sister was in danger. I relaxed and sank into one of the empty chairs, sparing him my urge to hug him close. Mian Zi hated PDA even when he wasn't upset with me.

“What happened? Last night, I mean.”

Mian Zi sat. Neither of us touched the food, even though he'd presumably ordered it and my stomach was rumbling. “I delivered a warning to Lady Basingstoke. Too late, as it turned out. I convinced Mei Shen to leave with me before either of us could be implicated, but she wasn't inclined to stay beyond this morning. I do not know where she went. I presume Tsung is with her.”

“Why didn't you deliver your warning to me?” I leaned forward, placing my hand on the edge of the table – the closest I dared come to touching him.

Mian Zi leaned away, ostensibly to serve us both pork buns. “What happened in Shanghai is my fault. I didn't see my uncle's distraction for what it was. If I had allowed David Tsung to enter Lung Di's sanctum, you would not have had to dishonor yourself.” He pushed the pork bun around his plate with his chopsticks, but he didn't eat. I don't think either of us was in the mood for eating. “I didn't want to make the mistake of involving you again.”

I strangled my napkin to keep from strangling my son. “So your solution is to leave me in the dark? Literally?” I'd been ready to follow Johnny's advice to let Mian Zi be pissed at me, but I hadn't expected him to blame himself. And I wasn't ready to touch the queasiness that washed through me at the words
dishonored yourself
. It made me feel unclean. “If your uncle is up to some new evil plan, maybe it might be a good idea for us to, oh, I don't know, work together to stop him? I mean, who needs a nemesis when we've got each other? That's the lesson I took away from Shanghai.”

“But now you're his champion,” Mian Zi said. “You can't risk working against him.”

“Just watch me…”

He touched the back of my hand, much like Johnny had tapped out the agent, and drew my strangled napkin from my lap. “I can't risk letting you,” he said.

It didn't quite sound like a threat, but that was because Mian Zi didn't threaten. He played the game without investing in the pieces. I might be his mother, but I was also a piece. Mei Shen might not be willing to sacrifice me to get at Lung Di. I wondered if Mian Zi was.

I pushed away from the table. Stood. I'd changed his nappies. I wasn't as easily intimidated by him as the rest of the people around him. “Are you going to stop me?”

“From involving yourself in this? No. I don't think my uncle is behind it. It was inelegant. The sigils used were rudimentary. The shadows have been dispersed or fled back to their masters. Let Mei Shen and Tsung chase what they're chasing. I need to make sure that China is not blamed, but that is as far as my interest goes.”

He stood. He was taller than me now, almost as tall as his father and uncle, and yet he still carried the beanpole thinness of youth. So young-looking. I wondered if he'd look this young for eternity. I wondered if all parents thought their kids stopped aging at seventeen.

Mian Zi hesitated, and then pulled me into a stiff hug. I made it doubly awkward by clinging to him a little too hard and burying my nose into his lapel. There might have been a tear or two.

“Stay safe, mother. And try not to make more enemies than you already have.”

I sniffled something like a laugh. “Well, where's the fun in that?”

I
didn't have
Mian Zi's aura of importance to protect me from Doris Han's curiosity. He managed to make his escape without delay, but it took me a good hour to answer her questions about how I merited a private audience with Mr Long. At least I got a good meal with my mouthful of lies. And a show, because the expressions of disbelief Johnny kept shooting my way were comedy gold.

After extracting a promise from Johnny that he'd let me know if he heard from Mei Shen, I headed out. Abby hadn't responded to my text. I sent another, this one with a little more detail.
You owe me an explanation
.

With Mian Zi exhausted as a lead and Mei Shen and David Tsung AWOL, I was fast running out of ways to find out what the hell was going on. I considered heading back to the Academy, but I suspected it would be cordoned off as a crime scene, and I wanted to keep Missy Masters as far away from that mess as I could manage.

I spent the walk home scanning useless news articles and Twitter debates on the subject and deleting the social awareness spam that was already piling up in my junk account. I switched over to my Mr Mystic account as I was letting myself in through the back of the house.

And only then remembered that I'd asked Jack to forward Sadakat's pictures.

“Shimizu?” I called as I entered our bottom floor in-law. Echoes answered. I sent a quick text and got an almost immediate
Date=Late
followed by a string of emojis: scissors, a thumbs up, and a winky face.

“Kids today,” I muttered and fired up my laptop.

The afternoon light faded and darkness shrouded the apartment, only broken by the light of my computer screen as I paged through the pictures, taking notes on placement, figure patterns, sigil repetition, variation. A few of the sigils looked familiar, and it was only when I got up to pull down my grandfather's journals for comparison that I realized how dark it had gotten. Shimizu was always after me to turn on lights. That Midwest accent of hers made her sound like a crotchety grandma, warning me I'd lose my eyesight if I kept reading in the dark.

But Shimizu wasn't home to tut at me. I made tea by the light of the Google homepage and went back to trying to decipher the sigils that had been used at the Academy.

My grandfather's journal provided one key. The symbols were ideographic, modified by diacriticals to indicate function and relation. I supposed that made sense. I'd picked up the rudiments of Shadow speech growing up with Mitchell – not that I knew that's what he was teaching me – and I'd improved my grasp of it during my years with Jian Huo. It was a language almost entirely composed of proper noun-verbs. No pronouns. No adverbs. It had confused the hell out of me until Jian Huo hauled out Plato and had me read up on the Realm of Forms.

I suppose it followed that the written language, such as it was, would be comprised of sigils that could be marked as actor, action, or object: Dancer, Dancing, Dance.

I came up for air when my phone dinged with a reply from Abby. Just a time and an address on Berkeley's campus, but that was fine. I could sort out the rest with her tomorrow. I rubbed my eyes. The sigils were starting to dance as well from a combination of exhaustion and bad lighting. I couldn't do anything more with them, not in this format.

“Time to William S. Burroughs this shit,” I told the empty apartment. I fired up the printer, checked paper and ink levels, and set the pictures to print while I hunted down a pair of scissors.

I found a pair in Shimizu's side of the bathroom. I suppose I should have looked there first – she was obsessive about split ends. By the time I returned to the living room, the printer was quiet and my laptop had gone into sleep mode, leaving the apartment dark enough that even I had trouble making out shapes. My gut rolled, and a shiver crawled up to kiss the back of my neck. I tightened my grip on the scissors. Sometimes being afraid of the dark is silly.

Sometimes, it makes absolute sense.

I hesitated in the hallway. There was no light there, and I'd shut off the bathroom light after I'd finished my rummaging. The living room switch for the lamps was all the way across the room next to the entry alcove. My bedroom door yawned open behind me, another potential danger unless I could reach my bedside lamp. That was the problem with century-old Victorians and questionably legal in-laws. Neither were known for their robust overhead lighting.

So, retreat, forge ahead, or accept that I was being paranoid? A sound like a whisper of silk dragged across wood decided me. A footstep. I wasn't alone. Flipping Shimizu's scissors underhand – better for slashing that way – I darted around the corner, going for the table we used as desk, eating surface, and occasional craft workspace. I didn't need much light. Just enough to give me an edge over whatever shadow monster had invaded my home. All I had to do was hit a key, knock my mouse an inch.

My stocking foot hit something not-wood and slipped out from under me. I fell fully prone, with only enough wits to fling my scissors aside so I didn't end up a cliché. I could just see my gravestone:
Missy Masters. She ran with scissors
.

My chin smacked hard against the wood floor, and it was only luck that I didn't bite my tongue in half. And then something descended on me, heavier than shadow, thick as a waterlogged wetsuit. It pinned my arms to my sides, and I feared if I rolled over, it would wrap around me and cover my face. I'd seen people suffocated by living shadow before. I didn't want to be among that number.

I crossed my arms and brought my knees up underneath me, trying to peel the shadow over my head like a latex prom dress. It got stuck halfway off, binding one arm against my head, but at least my other arm was free. And my legs. I rose to my knees, flailing with my free hand while I used my forearm to keep the shadow veil from closing over my face. Didn't need much light… just enough to…

My hand caught the curved wood edge of the table. I grabbed it and dropped back to the floor, using my weight as counterbalance to pull the table down with me. My elbow banged hard into the floor, jamming my nails into my forehead, but my hiss of pain was lost in the louder crash of the table toppling over onto me and my attacker. Light danced crazily across the walls, my view of it half-obscured by the thing wrapped around my head. I twisted again, and this time the creature slackened enough to let me pry it off and fling it aside. I caught sight of something flapping across the room, fleeing the laptop screen's light.

It disappeared into the darkest corner of the ceiling, right above the entry, blocking my escape route out of the apartment.

I scuttled back on my ass, fumbling for the laptop. It had fallen on its face, and the clamshell bend was the only reason it was casting any light at all. I grabbed it and turned it screen-out to the room.

Dark shapes with thick, smooth wings like manta rays cringed in every corner of the ceiling. There were so many that the black edges of their wings overlapped, creating that silken whisper as they shuffled over one another to escape the light of my laptop. It looked like something had hatched and was spreading out from the dark alcove near the front door.

“Fuck.”

Something crinkled under my hip. I flailed at it to cast it away, but it was only paper, not shadow. Paper with a clear photo print of one of the sets of sigils from the Academy.

“Fuck!” Several other sheets scattered across the floor where the printer had spit them out. I was a goddamned idiot. And now I had to get rid of the portals I'd accidentally created before something worse than creepy, cringing manta rays blundered through. But first I had to flush my flock of shadow mantas before they stopped cringing from my meager light and decided to attack. I rose to one knee, still wielding my laptop like a shield, and sidestepped to the kitchenette. The mantas shifted with my movement, shuffling across the ceiling to stay as far from my light as their overlapping mass would allow. Good. I opened the fridge door, inciting a wave of flapping and hissing. The mantas clustered in the entry alcove fled to the corner above the TV.