The Dragons of Heaven (39 page)

“Hmph. The combs'll see to that,” she grunted. She smoothed her matted thatch of hair, where two ornaments of jade now gleamed, and then hitched at a tangle of strings slung over her shoulder, my Docs dangling from them. “And I know a few places where these'll fetch a pretty price. Places a world away from here. Figure it'll be healthier for me to leave China for a while. If you see your rat again, give him my thanks. Few're willing to deal with the likes of me, much less deal fair.” With a nod, she spat over her left shoulder, spun three times widdershins, and disappeared in a fall of autumn leaves.

“Oooh. Mother. Can you teach me to do that?” Mei Shen asked.

“Later,” I promised, distracted by a building rumble beneath our feet. “We need to get out of here. Now. Run, Mei Shen.”

We started forward. The rumbling grew with every step. Mei Shen's legs were too short to keep up, so I scooped her up and booked toward the mouth of the cave. The walls smoothed from stone to smoke-blackened brick. Little crumbles of masonry rained down on us as the tunnel collapsed in our wake. I ducked and rolled, shielding Mei Shen with my body. Indiana Jones would have been proud.

Coughing, I raised my head and squinted against the cloud raised by the rubble. Still a few paces to go until we were free, and a few more across the alleyway to the fox temple gardens. I struggled upright and carried my daughter those last few feet.

As I passed through the archway and into the flashing neon of the Puxi at night, Mei Shen tumbled from my grasp as though yanked by invisible strings. I turned to grab her up again. Lung Di stood amid the rubble of the cave, an affable smirk on his face. From the temple across the alleyway came a roar like thunder.

“Mei Shen, hurry,” I said, trying to pull her across.

“I… I can't.” She strained forward, but it was as if some invisible force held her back. For the first time, I saw fear in her eyes. “Mother, I can't!”

I stopped tugging, kneeling and calming her with a few hushed words. Lung Di approached, stopping an arm's reach away from us. A rush of warm air at my back blew my hair and Mei Shen's into tangles. I spared a quick glance over my shoulder. Jian Huo had already reverted to human form, and he looked none-too-pleased. I returned his glower. If he'd been honest with me, we might not be in this mess.

If he'd been honest with me, my children might not exist.

Mian Zi spotted Mei Shen and clambered down from his father's arms with a glad cry, but Jian Huo held him back from rushing to greet us.

“She can't leave, you know.” Lung Di's words called my attention back to him. “She has been in my realm. Once a mortal creature has entered, they may not leave save by my will.”

“I left.”

“I allowed it.” He spread his hands. “Marvel at my generosity. Still, it was quite amusing, watching you go through all your machinations. Did you really think you had me fooled, even for a second?”

“Let her go, you bastard,” I whispered.

“Now, Missy. We both know what I want in exchange for that.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a strand of pearls. Their nacre gleamed dim and familiar. I stiffened, and behind me I heard Jian Huo growl.

“How did you get those?” I demanded.

“Your rat. You should never have left him to guard them while you put your fake daughter to bed. He was quite happy to trade them in exchange for his little trinkets.”

Mei Shen pushed again at the barrier that held her back from family and home, whimpering when it did no good. I shifted beside her so that I could see Jian Huo as well as Lung Di. Standing beside his father, Mian Zi looked just as miserable and frightened as Mei Shen. My children and I, caught in a war between two gods

Time for some magic.

“All right.” My shoulders slumped. “You win. You can have them. Just let Mei Shen go.”

Jian Huo jerked, and a defeated shudder ran through his entire body, but I only had eyes for my nemesis. Lung Di smiled a slow, malicious smile.

“Of course,” he said. “She is of little interest to me until she grows up. At the moment, I much prefer this prize.”

“So, she is free to go as she pleases? In exchange for those?” I nodded to the pearls in his hand, holding my breath. He stroked them lightly, possessively. I tried not to let my anxiety show.

He paused, seeming to consider the pearls, but he was enjoying everyone's distress too much to really look at them. His eyes passed over the jewels in his hand to meet mine.

“In exchange for these? She is.” He looked beyond me. I followed his gaze to Jian Huo. I had never seen my lover look so… I couldn't find a word to encompass all the emotions – anger, betrayal, disgust, despair. Everything that I'd felt on hearing Lung Di's revelations. I wanted to take it back, to go back to a time when I didn't know I was being tricked, but it was too late for that.

Mei Shen hurtled past the invisible ward with a cry of “Father!”, and all the hatred on Jian Huo's face drained away as he bent to catch her in his arms. Mian Zi was swept up too. I couldn't swallow past the tightness in my throat, to be on the outside of the family I'd worked so hard to bring back together. If I could just survive the next few minutes, then maybe Jian Huo would listen long enough for me to explain, maybe he'd have a good explanation for me. Maybe everything didn't have to be broken.

“What a happy sight.” Lung Di crept up beside me. I hadn't thought skin could crawl, but mine gave a good approximation. I stepped away, and I imagine the look I gave him was similar to the one Jian Huo had given me, minus the betrayal. I'd always known what Lung Di was. He'd only acted true to form.

“I thought you said you wouldn't take those by force or guile.” I nodded to the string in his hand.

“And so I didn't. They were yours. Your rat had no right to give them up. It doesn't matter who held them. They were still yours until you gave them to me.” He laughed his own triumph. “Instead, you bargained for your daughter, thinking you had nothing to lose. Such a shame. If only you had known better… were a little more patient. If only you belonged to this world, you might never have lost my brother's love.” He twined the pearls around his fingers, and again I held my breath. Nothing happened. I felt a moment's panic that I had been too clever for my own good, but I stifled it. My plan had worked. Please, let my plan have worked.

Jian Huo shifted to dragon form and bundled the children close. I had hoped for better circumstances to reveal everything – something more conducive to me not dying – but if I didn't act now, I might never see my family again.

“Wait!” I lunged for him, hoping also to put some distance between myself and Lung Di before I said anything more. Jian Huo ignored me, and the dragon at my side caught me by the arm before I could escape.

“Let it go, Missy. You've ceded his love to me. His pride is all he has left.”

“No. Jian Huo!” I called again. I yanked my arm, but Lung Di held fast. I hoped that bruises were the only injuries I'd have suffered come tomorrow. “I never gave him your pearls. I swear!”

“I already told you–” Lung Di began, but then Jian Huo swung his head around and stalked toward us, the twins still cradled in his grasp. A face full of draconic ire was thrust at me. His head was as tall as my whole body. I shied back a step, but Lung Di's grip kept me from retreating further.

“It doesn't matter, does it? Your intentions mean nothing, Melissa Masters. He has them now. I gave you the most precious gift I had to give, and because you could not trust in me, you squandered it. My siblings were right. You are not worthy to be my bride.” His head drooped and he turned away. In his claws, Mei Shen and Mian Zi huddled wide-eyed and silent. “I suppose, at the very least, I owe you my thanks for rescuing my daughter.”

Oh no. He did
not
get to make me the bad guy. “Will you listen?” I reached for him. The muscles of his hind quarters bunched as he prepared to launch into the sky. “They're not your pearls, you self-righteous lizard!” I shouted. “They're fakes!”

Jian Huo's head whipped around again. Before I could decipher the look on his face, Lung Di laughed.

“Really? Fakes? How stupid do you think I am?” Lung Di demanded.

“That's a rhetorical question, right?” I asked, anger turning me into a smartass. He growled and shook me by the arm he still held. He thrust the pearls into my face.

“These are real. I can taste the magic on them. Your rat gave them to me in exchange for his precious baubles, and you yielded them for a pittance.”

“Mei Shen isn't a pittance, and Templeton did exactly what he was supposed to do. Sure, those are real, as far as that goes, but they're not Jian Huo's pearls. You've been had.”

Lung Di sneered, but before he could respond, we were interrupted.

“She speaks truth.”

A warm wind washed up the alleyway, smelling of spring rain. The lights of Shanghai dimmed until there was only the deepness of night, the cold stars in a clear sky, and the rabbit-filled moon. The speaker picked her way over the rough pavement on a beam of silver moonlight, snowdrops and mossy green turf sprouting and spreading wherever she stepped. I shook my head, sure that I could hear the sound of crickets chirping.

The
qilin
was strange and wild and beautiful, but that was where her resemblance to the beast of western legend ended. Her head was more reptilian than equine, and her sinuous viridian body was smooth and hairless, wreathed in blue-green flame. She looked more like a slender, long-legged dragon than she did a horse. The unicorn comparison had to be based on the two corkscrew-spiraled horns that crowned her brow. The exterior of each horn was roughened and black like the outside of a mussel, but the insides shone violet-blue with nacre. A strand of pearls twined around one horn, glowing with a reflected sheen.

Jian Huo jerked when he saw the pearls. It was Lung Di's turn to go still and silent. The
qilin
walked up to me.

“I believe these belong still to you,” she said, lowering her head. The pearls trickled down her horn like heavy dew, pooling in my waiting hand.

“Those… those are…” Jian Huo's words faded on a breath.

“Your pearls.” I finished. Despite the
qilin's
words, I wasn't sure whether I should return them to him or not, given the circumstances.

“You gave them to the
qilin
?” Jian Huo's question rang stilted and harsh. I flinched.

“In a dream. But she never yielded them to me,” the creature said when I couldn't respond. “She asked me to guard them so they would not fall into… unwanted hands.”

“You…” Lung Di spun me to face him. His expression was twisted into an inhuman grimace. The false-pearls twined through his fingers. His fist clenched around them, and the illusion that Fang Shih had worked into them broke. They sliced deep into his flesh. As blood welled in the cuts and bathed the pearls red, they shimmered and became a dull woodcarving blade.

Lung Di uttered a cry of pain, dropping the knife. A necrotic cancer spread from the wound, engulfing his hand and moving up his arm. He released me to grasp at his forearm, stemming the necrosis with a grunt of pained concentration. Even though Fang Shih had warned me, I was so stunned by the turn of events that it didn't occur to me to use that opportunity to make my escape. Instead, I stood watching in dumb wonder as Lung Di's hand withered and blackened from the knife wound.

I was startled out of my stupor when his head whipped around to pin me with a glare. Before I knew what was happening, he was unfolding on himself, transforming from the suave businessman I'd spent the last few days conning into an ancient serpentine god. His blue-black coils tumbled down the alley, and the earth shook beneath us.

“You
BITCH
” he screamed, his withered claw coming around to strike me with the mother of all backhands. The blackened tissue broke on impact, and I went flying in a spray of blood and pus, hitting the far wall surrounding the temple and landing at its base in a crumpled heap.

I imagine things happened after that, as things are wont to do, but I wasn't too concerned about them until Mei Shen and Mian Zi's faces swam into view. I blinked. The stars swirled behind them like a Van Gogh painting, or something else. I struggled to remember the proper term for a skylight when it was underwater. Surely there was one.

“Mother? Mother, are you all right? Please be all right.” The twins alternated between being four beings and being one. I blinked again. Looking at infinity was making me dizzy and a little sick to my stomach.

“My pearls?” I said. I couldn't recall why it was important, but it was.

“They're still in your hand, Mother,” Mian-Mei replied. I wanted to hold them and tell them it would be all right, but I couldn't seem to make my body work. In the background I could hear strange sounds, like an earthquake… or a great thunderstorm.

“What's happening?” I asked.

“Father is fighting Lung Di.” Mian-Mei seemed to be crying, but I couldn't figure out why.

“Good,” I said. “I hope your father kicks his ass.” Speaking was difficult. My jaw hurt for some reason. My mouth was filled with cotton, my vision rimmed with white fuzz, and a high-pitched whine sounded in my ears.

I must be at the dentist
, was my last thought before the world dissolved to white.

N
ow

The first thing I saw when I entered was the dragon.

And I mean
dragon
. Blue-black serpentine coils tangled beyond undoing, lined with parallel fringe the violent blue of irises. A rainbow sheen played across the twists and bends, like light off the surface of an oil slick. It took me a moment to realize the light came not from without, but from within.

I took a step back, bumping into the door. This side wasn't shadow. Just door. Very solid door. Which meant I was trapped here with a dragon. The last time I'd tangled with him, things had not turned out well for me. Seeing him in his true form – or as true as any form he chose to take – reminded me just how badly they'd turned out.

But those great claws of obsidian lay quiescent in the gouges they'd dug into the stone floor. I took a tentative step forward, then another. He didn't stir. Maybe he was sleeping? Comatose? Dead?

No such luck. One great eye slid open, pale nictating membrane parting underneath. The iris narrowed; the great eye rolled toward me. I was Frodo in Mordor. There was nowhere to hide.

The eye fixed on me. He blinked. Slowly. A sluggish lizard too long in the cold. Except it was mild down here; there's a reason sommeliers use caves for storing wine.

He yawned with a jaw-popping crack that echoed like cannon fire. To my credit, I didn't try to retreat again. Wanted to, but didn't.

“Missy Masters. Come to save me from my own hubris. My hero.”

Yeah, he was just as annoying as I remembered. It was almost a comfort. At least he was predictable.

“I didn't come for you.” I edged further into the cavern. It was hard to see beyond his bulk, but I'd caught a flash of vibrant plumage when he'd opened his jaws. Not in them. Beyond them.

“I am bereft.”

“I just bet you are.”

His coils shifted, sliding against each other like a nest of eels. Past the constricting knot, I caught another flash of color. Feng Huang, the Phoenix, sat hunched in a gilded cage, head tucked under her wing. If she were here, the other Guardians must be.

I continued to circle him. The great eye tracked my progress. The bearded tendrils streaming from his maw twitched in amusement.

“And you are a liar. Of course you came for me. I created an international crisis and upset the balance of power in the spirit world.” He shifted again, uncoiled a bit, stretched. “I would be disappointed if I went to such trouble and you didn't come for me after such a blatant invitation.”

“Has anyone explained the concept of ‘overkill' to you?” I spied a flash of orange: Tiger in another golden cage, curled up tight as any house tom. His tail draped over his nose, tip twitching as he tore apart some doomed creature of his own imaginings. He should have been cute, but I found myself in sympathy with the dream creature.

“No. Perhaps you'll indulge me, though you may not want to waste the time. It took you longer to arrive than I'd expected. Much longer, and I might never have awoken.”

“Getting here was a bitch.”

“My apologies. If I had made it too easy, you might have suspected something.”

“Next time you might as well make it easier, because I'm always suspicious of you. When are you not up to something?”

He yawned again. “And yet you came anyways, and jumped through all my hoops. I suppose we should take a moment to mourn the death of the little idealist who wouldn't trade her pearls for her daughter.”

“I'm still an idealist.”

“Idealism is just a series of compromises waiting to happen. How many compromises did you have to make to get here?”

That hit close to home. I struggled for a good comeback. “Yeah. Well… so's your face.” Not the best retort in my arsenal. He looked pained.

“At least you are not rubber and I am not glue. That is something, I suppose.”

It had taken a bit more circling – I didn't bother being sneaky about it, and he didn't make a move to stop me – but I finally spied the third cage, golden bars set into the ground, arching over an emerald pool. The darker jade of Tortoise's shell just broke the surface, water lapping against it to some distant tidal rhythm.

“Well, you've got me here now. The compromises are my business to deal with. So what's it going to take to get you to release the Guardians and let down the Barrier. Let's bargain.”

“Everything I want from you, I already have. All that is left is to release the Guardians and seal the matter.”

“Just like that?” Seal what matter?

His eyes slid closed. He looked like he might go back to sleep on me. “You requested easy, and now you complain. You're an extremely contrary woman.”

“I'm the one who's contrary. Right.” I nudged a coil with my foot. “Wake up.”

His eyes opened a crack. “I apologize. Maintaining the ward takes much from me. From all of us. Here.”

He uncoiled, and I saw that he was curved around something besides himself. An altar with all sorts of junk on it – symbolic implements I didn't know the purpose of, so junk to me, at least. Red candles in tall brass holders flanking an etched brass ewer, jade tea cups ringing a silver basin, a huge wooden rice tub painted red, with several banners on poles jutting up out of it. The inscriptions were just as arcane as the rest of the implements: the Three Dots Society, the Three Harmonies, Red Eyebrows, and White Lotus. If there'd been a banner for the 4-H club, it wouldn't have looked out of place to me.

“Take the banner above the door. Burn it. Mix the ash with the wine.”

Banner above the door? I glanced that direction. A long sheet of paper with the characters for “
Lung Xin Niang
” hung above the lintel. And other characters I didn't recognize.
Lung Bao Hu Zhe
?

It took me a moment to translate; I was rusty. Dragon protector? As if. “Aw. You made me a banner. Is there a cake?”

“I'll get you one later. You brought the knife?” I pulled it out, unwrapped it from the protective silk. Something flickered through Lung Di's half-lidded eyes at seeing it. His left claw clenched against the stone. It looked well and whole, but still emaciated compared to his other claws.

“Good. I can't tell you what a disaster this would have been if you'd forgotten it.”

“So, Tsung is still working for you?” Poor Mei Shen. She'd be devastated. Assuming she didn't refuse to believe it.

“David works for himself, which makes him easy to predict.”

“He tried to come here instead of me.”

“Of course. He wants badly what I'm about to give to you. But I was confident that you wouldn't let him stop you. You could say I counted on it, your need to be the hero.” His eyes drooped shut. I recognized that state. It was the “just for a moment” level of tiredness that led to semis crashing on the Grapevine in the early morning hours.

I snatched the yellow paper banner from above the doorway, crumpled it into the empty silver basin, and set it alight with one of the candles. It burned quickly. I grabbed one of the banners from the rice tub and used the end of its pole to tamp down on the cinders and crush the thin filaments to ash. The brass ewer was so heavy it took both hands to steady it while I poured. The ashes sloshed about in the dark wine.

Lung Di's head curved toward me as if to watch the proceedings, but he hadn't opened his eyes again. In fact, he was doing something that sounded suspiciously like snoring – his breath came hard enough to blow my trousers flat against my legs.

“Hey.” I nudged his chin with my toe. Then nudged harder. “Wake up, you useless lizard.”

“Hmm?” He raised his head an inch, his lids opening only a few inches more. The nictating membrane underneath barely parted. “Ah. Good. Now dip the knife in the wine and slice your finger with it.”

I looked at his claw again, half-tucked under his length and still not fully healed.

“No fucking way.”

“As amusing as it would be to see my wound visited upon you, that is not my intent. The mixture nullifies the necromancy of the blade. Your blood on the blade is the key.”

“What key?”

“To the cages. Above each is an inscription. Read the oath, use the knife on the lock, and the Guardians' magic is returned to them. Missy saves the day. There'll be a parade, I'm sure. And cake.”

“You're lying.” And I'd had enough of playing along. I squeezed past the altar and held the blade of the knife to the joint below his jaw. His moustaches quivered again, a reaction I'd always read as amusement with Jian Huo. “We've seen what this did to your claw. Wonder if it'll do the same to your head. Now stop screwing with me. This whole thing has cost you. Mei Shen rules the Shadow Dragons now. Everyone else is pissed at you. And you want me to believe you captured the guardians and raised the New Wall just to free them and take it down? What's the point?”

“The point was to bring you here to free them. Only that knife will do. Only the blood of a Shadow-born will do. Even if you use that knife on me, I am immortal. The ward will stand, the world will fall, and you will be trapped here.”

“But why me? Why this big, Rube-Goldberg scheme to get me here? I'm nothing to you. I'm not even a good pawn anymore.”

“You are a lousy pawn. You bested me before because I mistook you for one. Just a concubine, I thought, when you had the makings of a champion, like your grandfather. Well, now you are one, or will be. Mine.”

I jerked – away, luckily, or I might have nicked him. “Bullshit. I'm not your champion.”

His shoulders rolled, the movement rippling all down his length. “You will be, as soon as you speak the oaths and free the others. They'll be furious, I imagine. Your first duty will probably be to defend me from them. Lucky for you they'll be weakened as I am.”

One claw – the thinner one – lifted and curved possessively around my ankles. “Once
Lung Xin Niang
, now
Lung Bao Hu Zhe
. Not quite my brother's bride, now my champion.”

I was shaking so hard I could barely keep hold of the knife. There's no worse feeling in the world than helplessness. It had been years since I'd felt this
used
.

“I won't do it.”

“Of course you will. This isn't like that debacle with the pearls. This is a game I've controlled from the start.”

“But why me? You said yourself: I'm a lousy pawn now.”

“Against my brother, yes. Against your children? There's none better. Will they try to supplant me if it means they must kill their mother to do so?”

“Get bent. What happens if I just let them kick your ass anyways when that day comes?”

“Then your honor would be ash in the wind, and your word dust on your tongue. Lung Tian would have reason to deny your status as
Lung Xin Niang
. Mei Shen and Mian Zi would no longer be fit to be Lung Huang's heirs. They would no longer be a threat to me.”

My everything went numb. The knife clattered to the floor.

“You fucking asshole.” He would pick now to develop a taste for poetry.

“I am seeing to my own protection. Remember, Missy, that I am not the one who arranged for them to be a threat. For that you must look to my brother. I am merely assuring a
détente
. If Mei Shen and Mian Zi do nothing, then nothing will ever come of this. I may even come to your aid to ensure your safety. Now that I have a vested interest in your continued existence.”

His head settled back to the ground. His eyes slid shut again with a sigh that blew my hair back.

“So now we will see… what is your opinion on doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, Missy? Because I am not asking you to betray anyone this time,” he murmured. “Except yourself.”

I don't know how long I watched him sleep, frozen in my helplessness. I could try to break the cages some other way, but I was no sorcerer. Card tricks and parlor magic were my forte. What if I just made things worse? The cages glimmered gold, but with a brightness and energy like no metal I'd ever seen.

I couldn't even leave, unless I wanted to brave the voidlands without the plague of Templetons to save me. And every moment I delayed was another moment the world grew more chaotic.

In the end, I stooped down and picked up the knife. Dipped it in the mixture of wine and ash. Brought it to my hand.

Idealism was a series of compromises waiting to happen, he'd said. He'd managed to manipulate me into one I was willing to make.

I
approached
Tortoise's cage first. He was slow. Of all the Guardians, he was the one I could probably take in a fight.

The barest touch of the knife sliced my finger, deeper than I'd intended, almost as though intent to cut were enough. Shades of the Subtle Knife. No necrotic cancer crawled up my arm, but the cut still burned as though unclean, oozing blood as I pulled my finger away from the christened blade.

A strip of yellow paper fluttered above Tortoise's cage. There was no door I could see, but a plain, solid plate sat at waist height. The kind of place where a keyhole should be if this were a normal cage.

On impulse, I tried touching the knife to the plate without reciting the words. All I got for my trouble was a shock. I yelped and swapped the knife to my bleeding hand, fingers going to my mouth on instinct. The heat didn't help. I pulled my hand away; my fingers were already blistering.

He could have just made the key-plate not work rather than giving me second-degree electrical burns, but no. He was an asshole, and this was his reprimand.

Gingerly, I swapped the knife again. I could make out the inscription easily enough. I almost wished I didn't understand it. Then I could pretend to myself that on some level this wasn't my choice.

“I stand as
Lung Bao Hu Zhe
. This I swear on the freedom of the Guardian of the North.”