The Dragons of Heaven (40 page)

I touched the knife to the plate.

There was another jolt, but this one didn't burn me. It traveled up the bars of the cage, which began to sizzle, then to melt. They trickled down themselves like a candle burned too long, into a puddle around Tortoise, and then into the Guardian himself.

His shell brightened to jade fire. A beaked snout poked out one end, myopic eyes blinking like a newborn. Four webbed feet, sharp claws curving back, also emerged.

Really sharp claws. A beak that could sever a limb, and a shell harder than the stone it resembled. Why had I thought he would be the easy opponent?

He lifted his head over the lip of the pool, looking past me at his captor. With a heave of those powerful legs, he wedged himself up over the edge of the pool and lunged for Lung Di.

He moved faster than I remembered, faster than any newly-awoken creature should. What if Lung Di had been lying and the Guardians weren't weakened by their captivity? Maybe this was just a pointlessly elaborate plan to end me.

I caught Tortoise by the edge of his shell as he barreled past me.

“Oh no you don't! I need him alive.” With a heave of my own, I flipped Tortoise onto his back.

There's something horribly cruel about watching a turtle struggling to right itself from being overturned and doing nothing to help. He looked how I felt: trapped and helpless.

“
Lung… Xin… Niang
…” He stopped trying to use his head as a lever when he caught sight of me. Recognized me. He twisted for a better view. “Why are you helping that villain? Turn me over. Let me have my vengeance.”

“Gui Dai,” I set my palms together and bowed. “I would love nothing better than to let you rip him a new one, but if he gets hurt, all of China suffers.”

“What do I care for that?” Tortoise snapped. I took a step back, just in case his neck could stretch farther than I'd estimated. “He imprisoned me and stole my power. I will drag him into the deep waters of time until I have extracted repayment.”

Why had I thought Tortoise was the mildest, most considerate of the Guardians? Looking at him now, even comically overturned, I realized he was closer in mind and body to a great crocodile. Or a dinosaur. One who didn't care about me one way or another.

“You aren't taking anyone anywhere like that. I'll flip you back over, but only if you promise to leave here without attacking Lung Di or dragging him anywhere.”

“You assume the role of his champion?”

It was still hard to accept, but every compromise made it a little easier. After all, it was too late now. I'd shed the blood and spoken the oath.

“Yeah. I guess I do.”

Tortoise stilled, considering this. He considered a long time.

“Very well. You have freed me from the cage of my own power. For that, I will spare your master. Today. Now, right me.”

He could have been lying, but I doubted it. The oath of a spirit was a binding thing. I crept forward and grabbed the edge of his shell. Any moment he could snap out and I'd lose my blistered hand.

It took more effort than flipping him into this position had. The curve of his shell worked against us, but eventually we righted him.

He looked to the other two Guardians, still locked in their golden cages.

“You intend to free them, too?”

I nodded. “Yeah. It's why I came here.”

Tortoise trundle-scraped back to the pool. “Then one of them will succeed where I have not. I wish I could wish you luck in defending your master,
Lung Bao Hu Zhe
. But I do not.”

He slid back into the viridian pool with a splash that sloshed water over all sides, and disappeared into the depths.

I turned to the other two Guardians. Phoenix and Tiger. Tortoise was right. I was screwed.

I approached Phoenix's cage, mostly because thinking about facing Tiger set large parts of my mind to gibbering in abject terror. Anything to put that off. Phoenix would just burn me to a crisp and have done, but Tiger was a cat. He'd play with me first.

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

There was another surge as I touched knife to plate, but instead of melting to a puddle, the bars imploded into a fiery ball. I jumped back as Phoenix was bathed in bright gold flames, nearly dropping the knife for the umpteenth time. My hand was killing me.

Phoenix's long, sinuous neck untucked. Her wings spread, and she launched aloft with a cry. She circled once, twice, reveling in her freedom. Then her head craned down, and the flames shifted from the gold of exaltation to the red of pure fury. She dove down at Lung Di's sleeping form, flames rising to fill the room.

“Oh no you don't!” I hopped a dragon coil and snatched the full basin from the altar, dousing the Phoenix a scant meter away from ground zero.

The flames sputtered out, and she fell the last few feet in a graceless tumble. She squawked, a sound more in keeping with a surprised chicken than a creature of legend. Her bedraggled feathers dripped wine and ash. She managed a spark or two, but the flames of a moment ago were beyond her, at least for a little while.

“
Lung Xin Niang
?” She cocked her head, carnelian eyes still shining with an inner flame. “Why are you protecting this louse?”

“Because I'm his champion. Long story. Look, I'd take it as a kindness if you could just let the vengeance thing slide for today? I really don't want to have to fight you.”

I'd only met Tortoise the one time, but Phoenix was a regular visitor back in my days on Minshan. Granted, she'd been Jian Huo's friend, but that connection had to count for something, right?

Not much, given the darkening of her eyes and the hiss she let out. I'd read once that a full-grown swan could break a man's arm with a beat of her wings. Phoenix had a similar wing-span. I considered setting a few dragon coils between us, then realized that Lung Di hardly made a good shield.

“You have fallen far,
Lung Bao Hu Zhe
, if you have taken up with this one. But you have freed me, so I will spare you this once.”

Another spark, and another, like someone trying to light a Zippo that was out of juice. But with the third, she sparked to life, flames burning away the wine in a sour-smelling cloud.

She launched aloft again. “I cry for your children, to have such a mother.”

She didn't pause her momentum as she reached the roof, dashing against it and sending a cloud of flame roiling out from her point of impact.

It died with nothing to fuel it. Phoenix was gone, leaving me alone with the dragon.

And Tiger.

I approached Tiger's cage with all the trepidation it deserved. Actually, a lot less trepidation than it deserved, but there was only so much I could muster. I was reaching exhaustion point.

On reflection, maybe saving him for last hadn't been the best of ideas.

“Hey, kitty, kitty,” I whispered to give myself courage. He was asleep. What was he gonna do?

The bars of the cage burned fallow gold, crosshatching his stripes with their light. The inscription over the bars was predictable at this point. At least I'd have a few moments grace while he woke and stretched.

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

Only as I touched the knife to the plate did I notice that little shift in his haunches – the one that told you a cat wasn't sleeping at all, but was merely biding its time to pounce.

“Oh, shi–”

The cage dissolved too fast for me to react, separating into motes of dust scattered on an invisible ray of light. Tiger launched at me through the cloud, the dust coating his body.

I was down before I could do more than turn, my chin knocking hard on the stone floor as four-hundred pounds of Tiger pressed me to the ground. My hands twisted under me, palms stinging from where the stone had gouged my skin when I tried to break my fall.

I wormed my hands into a better position, ignoring the additional scraping. If I could just get a little leverage, I might be able to throw him off before he ate me.

“
Lung Xin Niang
. No. It is
Lung Bao Hu Zhe
now.” Tiger's breath blew hot against my ear. His whiskers brushed my neck. They tickled. I cringed.

“You know?” I was having trouble breathing from the weight of him.

“I know.” He settled on top of me, front paw patting at my head. It should have been a comforting gesture – his claws were retracted, after all – but I'd seen enough cats play with small objects to know the difference.

“
Lung Bao Hu Zhe
. Do you think I take the form of a cat by chance? Cats are never so asleep that we do not know what goes on in the waking world, nor ever so awake that we do not also walk in dreamtime. I know because I watched your ‘battles' with Tortoise and Phoenix and your conversation with my… host. You will not have things so easy with me.”

He rose and stepped off of me. I scuttled up to my knees, turning to face him. He looked almost demure, tail curled about his feet, golden eyes watching me with the patience of a predator who knows his prey has nowhere to run.

“You have freed me, so I will offer you this. You may choose to continue this fight now. I am still drowsy and weak. Maybe you will best me because of this. But if you do not, I will devour you, and your master, and chase your friends through his tower until I tire of the game. Or, you may put off our battle for another time, when I am strong and you have no chance of winning. But your master and your friends will be safe. Which is it to be?”

There wasn't really a question. There'd be no trick for defeating Tiger, not like with the other two, and I still had a Wall to dismantle.

“Later,” I said.

He nodded, as though he expected nothing else. Rising back to his feet, he turned and stalked off into the shadows, orange-and-black-ringed tail flicking.

I used a nearby coil to haul myself to my feet, then slumped over it. Lung Di slept on, unconscious. The final Guardian. There was no cage around him that I could see, but…

I picked up the knife and lurched towards the door I'd come through. Sure enough, there was the blank gold key-plate, just as with the others. I didn't need an inscription to know what to say.

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

I touched the blade to the plate. Every particle of air in the room charged. My hair stood on end, my bones and teeth itched with a vibration like one of those turn-of-the-century electrocution carnival games. A sharp stench, like ozone, permeated the space.

Lung Di opened his mouth, breathing it all in with a cavernous yawn. His coils toppled over themselves in great rolls, the dragon equivalent of a stretch. The charge dissipated, and his coils compressed themselves in a mind-breaking demonstration of non-Euclidian geometry. Within moments, I wasn't looking at a dragon at all. In his place was a tall Chinese man wearing a dark blue business suit, violet tie held in place with smoky topaz, and a smug grin.

“As I said when you arrived. My hero.” He smoothed the lapels of his suit, straightened the glove that covered his left hand. “Now, let us see about cleaning up this mess Mr Tsung summoned onto my doorstep.”

He gave me a wide berth as he passed. It was almost like he knew I wanted to kick him in the shins.

T
hen

No conversation in the history of relationships that has started with the words “We need to talk” has ended well.

I found Jian Huo in the pagoda. Since stairs were still a challenge for my wobbly vestibular sense to navigate, it was the best hiding place he could have picked. I had to commandeer Mei Shen and Mian Zi – they refused to be parted after their long separation – to keep me steady on my hobble down to beard the dragon in his pagoda.

I shooed them off at the arch. Kids shouldn't witness their parents fighting. I'd read that somewhere.

“We need to talk,” I said to Jian Huo's back. I marveled at how strong and steady my voice sounded, almost as if I wasn't speaking from a churning diaphragm and a strangle-tight throat. Almost as if I hadn't been muffling great, wracking sobs into the pillow of my recovery bed as I relived over and over my dinner with Lung Di and the truths he'd revealed in his manifesto. I'd watched my kids' reunion, hating… not them, but the way their closeness cultivated the seed of doubt that asshole had planted. I knew the truth. I just needed to hear it confirmed from another asshole's lips.

Jian Huo set his teacup on the low table at his side, giving me a glimpse of his face in profile. Darkness shadowed his cheek from temple to jaw. Not shadow. I knew shadow. A bruise. Lung Di had given us a matching set.

That which doesn't kill us… But I didn't feel stronger. I just wanted to cast myself across Jian Huo's lap and use his chest like I'd been using my pillows.

“You need to talk. I have little to say to you.” He turned back to the sea of clouds covering the world. Any urge to water him with tears was banished by those smooth, cold words. He was pissed at me?

Aw,
hell
no.

“Are you seriously still mad about the thing with the pearls?” I rounded the tea table and planted myself in front of him so he couldn't stare off into the distance and pull his ancient, mystical dragon shit. “I told you, the
qilin
told you, you saw. They were–”

“Fakes. Yes. You fooled us all.” Jian Huo stood. I thrust out a hand to stop him if he meant to escape, but he squared off against me. “You should be very proud of yourself.”

“I am. I got Mei Shen back. And I didn't ruin your
guanxi
or lose your pearls.”

“Or get yourself killed?” He grabbed my shoulders. He was trembling. We both were. “He could have killed you, Missy, or trapped you as he trapped our daughter. And me left helpless to do anything for you. You just left, without talking to me, without sharing your plan so I might help you. And I am glad – overjoyed – that you succeeded, but you treated me as though I was nothing to you. And he could have
killed
you.”

Meteor showers cascaded through the black of his eyes. I'd never seen Jian Huo distressed like this, not since that first time I'd been sucked into shadow, and I didn't want to see it now. He dared take me to task over the way I'd treated him?

“He doesn't want me dead. Dead, I'm a heroic martyr, and Lung Tian wouldn't be able to wriggle out of naming me
Lung Xian Niang
.” I brought my hands between us and swept my arms in an arc, breaking his hold. I hobbled out of range of his hold or his concern. “Seems Lung Di isn't down with that scenario.”

“What do you mean?”

I pressed my hands to my cheeks to cool them. It was warm here in Jian Huo's realm, always spring, but fury had me flushed beyond that pleasant warmth. “Did you have kids with me to supplant your brother in the cosmic order of things?”

Said aloud like that, it sounded ridiculous. So ridiculous, I almost laughed. How had Lung Di ever convinced me to believe something so–

“Ah. So he told you.” Jian Huo took a step back from me, hands disappearing into his sleeves.

I gaped at his assumption of that reserved mien, like he couldn't possibly be in the wrong. “You son of a bitch!”

“I am a son of the Tao.”

Fucking pedant. “Well, the Tao is a mother fucking bitch. You
used
me. I… I can't even…” I hobbled back and forth, needing movement, needing to escape this confirmation. I felt ill all over again, the same nausea that had taken me when Lung Di revealed that I was being used. I wanted to flee, but my own injuries and Jian Huo's tall form in the archway blocked any easy escape. He kept his hands in his sleeves, his face devoid of any emotion. The distress of moments before had been packed away. I guess the lie of his concern was no longer needed now that I'd confronted him with the truth.

I barked my shin on the corner of the tea table. The pain shot up my leg, deeper than bone, clearing away all confusion. I knew what I had to do, what self-respect and self-preservation demanded. I kicked the stupid table aside and lurched past Jian Huo. “I'm out of here.”

“Missy–”

“NO!” I evaded his attempt to catch me, stumbling into the arch post for support. I didn't want him touching me, not ever again. “I got what I wanted from you. You got what you wanted from me. We're done. Good luck ousting your brother.” I pushed away from the pole and made my unsteady way down the path toward the Dragon Gate. Oddly, I really meant that last sally. Not that I didn't mean all the others, but that last?

Yeah, I wanted Lung Di to go down. And I wanted my kids to be the ones to do it.

Shit. My kids. I hesitated just past the Dragon Gate. Even a few steps out of Jian Huo's realm, my teeth were chattering from the cold seeping through my silk robes and into my core. Not even fury could warm me against it. I glanced back at the gardens. My kids were up there. I couldn't stay because of Jian Huo, but I couldn't leave because of them. Not like this, not like Mitchell had left, without a word of explanation.

But if I stayed to say goodbye, could I force myself to leave at all?

“Missy, we are not finished.” Jian Huo had followed me. He stood at the head of the path, and, gods, he was beautiful, even with half his face shadowed purple with bruises.

Home. Husband. Children. I'd built a life here, beyond any original intent I'd had to come and study and leave again after… when? A few weeks? Months? Gods, I'd been so fucking naïve. How could I leave this, even after learning the truth? This was my life now.

“We are. We are finished.” I wanted to charge back into the gardens, find Mei Shen and Mian Zi, drag them with me. But Jian Huo would never allow that. Worse, Mei Shen might be willing to come, but Mian Zi would resist. And they'd both be miserable. I couldn't do that, tear them apart, make them miserable. Better to contain the misery to just myself.

“It's all… finished.” I turned my back on my home and hobbled down into the cold and piling drifts.

Jian Huo caught me a few steps down. Not the man. The dragon. His claws closed above me in a loose, golden cage. Snowflakes landed on his red and green scales, diamonds among emeralds and rubies before his heat melted them into wisps of steam. “I will take you down to the temple. You will never make it on your own. You are not recovered.”

He wasn't even going to ask me to stay? No, of course he wasn't, and I hated myself that I wanted him to. I hesitated. Nodded. This way, I wouldn't be tempted to turn around and trudge right back up the hill when the cold ate away my anger and my resolve.

Jian Huo scooped me up and launched into the sky. I huddled in his grip and tried to tell myself I wasn't leaving my heart behind with my stomach.

J
ian Huo approached
the temple at the head of the Huanglong valley in a roiling fog meant to hide him from curious tourists. It burned off within moments of landing, but that was fine. I wasn't standing beside a dragon anymore. I was barely standing beside a recognizable Jian Huo. He'd dumped the fancy
hanfu
for a simple set of monks' robes. He still had his bruises, though, and his hair. It coiled behind him, the end dipping into the aquamarine waters of one of the travertine pools.

I wanted to fish it out, just for an excuse to touch that hair one last time. I clasped my hands behind my back to keep myself from showing such weakness.

“So.”

“So.”

A shriek from the temple interrupted any attempt at awkward goodbyes. “Missy?”

A distantly-familiar
laowai
woman with lean limbs, sun-kissed cheeks, and salon-streaked hair jogged toward me, waving and beaming. I had to root through memory to place her. “J-Jill?”

And the man coming up behind her. “Jim?”

She reached me and yanked me into a hug. “Oh, thank god you're OK. And you made it back down just in time. It took a few days–”

“And more international roaming minutes that I care to calculate,” the man behind her drawled.

“–But we found another bus that can take us back to Chengdu.” Jill released me, but only enough to inspect my face and clothes. She flinched. I wasn't sure if it was due to the bruise or the fact that I wasn't a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old anymore. “You look… different.” Her gaze dropped from my face, settled on something less troubling. “Is this silk? God, I
love
this! Jim, look at the embroidery!”

Jim seemed more interested in Jian Huo than the embroidery. He glowered at him like a protective older brother, even as he spoke to me. “Where did you go? We tried to tell the temple monks and the tour guides about you, but half the time they pretended not to understand, and the other half they said you would be safe as a guest of the mountain. Whatever the hell that means.”

Jim might as well have been a midge for how much effect his glare had on Jian Huo. “It means me. And I have brought her safely back to you.”

As weird as it was to see Jian Huo in anything but his ostentatious robes, it was even weirder to hear him speak perfect, received-pronunciation English.

English. He spoke English. We could have been speaking English this entire time. I glared fuck-yous at him.

Jill remained oblivious to my fuming, hugging me again. “The cousins are going to be so relieved. And Gunther. We've all been kicking ourselves for letting you go off on your own.”

I couldn't speak past the surreality of the meeting. Who
were
these people? I'd only known them for a week, and that had been fifteen years ago.

I wormed out of Jill's embrace. “If you could just… I just need to have a quick word with…” I gave up on coming up with a good excuse and grabbed Jian Huo's sleeve, dragging him across a nearby bridge that spanned the pools so I could rip him a new one in solitude.

I stopped halfway across. “What. The hell.”

He gave me a curious look. “Was that a question?”

I glanced back at Jill and Jim, who were casting us equally-curious looks. Two older ladies joined them, hands clamping matching sunhats to their snowy hair. I couldn't remember their names, but I recalled they were from England. Norfolk? Suffolk? One of the folks.

I released Jian Huo's sleeve like I was flinging off a bug. “Explain,” I commanded, crossing my arms.

For several seconds, I didn't think he would, but then he tucked his hands in his sleeves and sighed. “I do not know that I can give you what you wish. There is no great need for explanation. You are an intelligent creature. If you have not already deduced what I did, then you soon will.”

“You worked some spirit mojo with time so that everything that I thought took place over fifteen years actually took place in a moment of real time,” I said. I didn't understand all the nuances, likely never would, but I'd gotten that much at least. I touched my cheeks, looked at my hands. I didn't
feel
any different. I didn't feel like the clock had been turned back fifteen years. “You couldn't have stopped me from aging?”

“I could have, but then you would never have changed, never grown, never been able to…” He flattened his lips against his next words, as if I couldn't guess what he'd been about to say.

I would never have been able to bear him his fucking master plan.

Screw explanations. I'd been right to leave. “You are unbelievable.”

He caught my arm when I would have walked away. “I thought you would have been pleased to return to a world unchanged.”

“Oh, is that what you thought? And you didn't consider that I might be upset to learn that it was all a dream? That none of it was real?”

“What do you take me for? Do you think me some kind of charlatan, that the only realities I can spin are illusions? It was real. The life we led was as true as anything in this world.”

“Don't you see? It's meaningless now. You've given it back, and it's like it never happened.”

“How is it so? Mei Shen and Mian Zi are alive and well. You retain all that you've learned. The friends that you've made are still yours.” He snorted. “As are the enemies. You believe I've wronged you by compressing all of this into a moment, but perhaps you wrong me by denying the significance of that moment.”

I couldn't. I couldn't stand here and listen to
him
tell
me
how I'd wronged him. Not without wanting to shove him over the bridge railing and into one of the travertine pools that had brought me to the Huanglong valley so long ago.

A few days ago?

I covered my face, scraped my fingers back through my hair, feeling every one of my thirty-three years, and fighting back the exhausting realization that I wouldn't be able to share my loss with anyone. The friends I'd left behind were no longer family; the family I'd built, I had to leave behind.

“Missy–”

I stepped back from him before he could touch me. “Leave it. It's done. I guess at least I won't have to deal with missing persons reports and whatever you have to do to come back from the dead.” I laughed so I wouldn't cry. My visitor's Visa wasn't even expired.