DAC 3 Precious Dragon (9 page)

Much later, or so it seemed, the drawer was opened again. Through the glass wall of the bottle, Mai's eye looked as vast as the sun. The eye was anxious.

"Pin?" Mai said. "Are you all right?"

There were a number of sarcastic replies to this, but the question was evidently meant kindly, so Pin answered, "I think so."

"I'm at the end of my shift. I'm going to put you in my pocket. Please keep quiet."

"All right," Pin said. Light was abruptly snuffed out as Mai put the bottle inside her coat. Pin could feel the jolting sensation as she walked and there were a number of sounds around him. This seemed to go on for some time.

At last the bottle was plucked free and he was set down on a table. Pin looked around him, seeing a small room lit by lamps. Patterned shadows danced across the walls and a young man sat in a chair by the fire, reading a book.

"What's that you've got there, Mai?" he asked. He had a light, pleasant voice.

"Oh, just something I brought back from the lab," Mai said. She went over and kissed his cheek; he too looked ill, Pin thought. "I'm just going to put it in the bathroom." She picked up the bottle and carried it into an adjoining room.

"Now," she said, holding the bottle level with her face. "Tell me everything."

"I'll do my best," Pin said.

Once Embar Dea reached the open sea, she swam quickly, surfacing from time to time to watch the wheel of the stars. She could hardly see them, but she could track their passage across the sky, and tell that she was still in time. The sea was calm, but she sensed the ripples beginning beneath the floor of the trench, and she could smell the sand that was stirred up from the ocean bed, dirty with chemicals and the pungent odor of fire, strange so far beneath the sea. Embar Dea rode the waves with ease. Her fear had gone; she was no longer confined within the walls of the temple, and she was young again now, riding swift upon the currents and breathing the track that led her to Tenebrae.

Night passed and the new day shone under the surface of the water, light curving and fragmented. She was coming closer to the cold waters, the ice seas of the north, and she breathed in the fresh water, snowmelt running cold along her dappled sides. A thousand words for water, the sea dragons had, describing the part of the world that was real to them, and Embar Dea sang them now: sweet water of the mountains; the acid salt up from the complaining ocean trenches; the rainwater from the forests which covered the hills of China, scented with earth and leaves, carrying fragments of the woods far out to sea.

Someone was reached by her song, responding with a note, and Embar Dea rolled joyfully in the icy waves under the sun, thinking, Not alone, no longer alone, coming closer to Tenebrae. She swerved in the seas and turned toward the singer, but now something came between herself and the song, a barrier that broke the water, disturbed the carrying current. The dragon dived, straight down toward the safety of the seabed, and watched the ship draw above, covering the path of the sun. She saw the square hull curve up over the swell, then in a sudden patch of gentle water the ship cast its shadow over the hills of the seabed, and the guns lay like thorns along its sides. The distant song sang warning, and the voice of wisdom inside Embar Dea's head told her: Stay here, out of sight, stay still. Be silent, Embar Dea told herself; but she was young again. She cried out, and the sound echoed off the ship's hull, crackling through the sunlit water. The dragon sang, and the distant voice, suddenly cruel, joined hers. The ship's radar would be swinging wildly now, uncertain of its path, easy to lead it, draw it singing on. Far below, Embar Dea sang, and watched as a cloud drew across the sun and the sea swelled up around her. She somersaulted in the water and, turning, swam before the ship, singing it on, and it followed her obediently, drawn on by the deceiving instruments into the path of the gathering storm.

The arctic water was as green as a winter sunset, luminous with phosphorescence. Sea jellies, crusted with ice, drifted ghostly through the sea's depths and a single sea star coasted among them, browsing on their trailing tentacles. Embar Dea ignored the life around her. She followed the path of the stars, the underwater current which followed what, on land, would become an energy line, and then at last through the glassy water she saw a great bulkhead looming up, a rotting hull beneath the ice. Along one side, the name of the tanker was still visible, Aluha: the first ship lured to these icy seas by the siren dragons to sink among the icebergs.

It was close to nine o'clock when Chen wearily stepped onto the deck of the houseboat—a sultry evening, with an oily, yeasty smell drifting off the waters of the harbor. Inari came to meet him, ducking under the lintel of the kitchen door with a pan in her hand.

"Darling! You're home!" Some women would have made remarks about the time, questioned him as to where he'd been and what he'd been doing, but Inari was never like this. She always seemed delighted that he'd come back at all. "How was work?"

"Boring," Chen said, "and then exciting." The one breach of official protocol that he ever entertained was to talk to Inari about work. In a sense, she was part of it: Hellkind, after all, even though her heart had never belonged to Hell, or to the vast, scheming clan which had sought to marry her off to a scion of the Ministry of Epidemics. Inari was a good person; death—had she been a mortal—would surely have qualified her for entrance into Heaven.

So now Chen told her about Miss Qi, and her unexpected talent for violence. Inari's crimson eyes widened as he spoke and her small face grew even paler.

"She sounds—remarkable. But you know, there are warriors among the Heavenly Host and even Hell fears them, and the great swords that they carry. Heaven has its armies, just as Hell does."

"That's true," Chen said. He sat down on the bench that stood just outside the kitchen and accepted a bowl of green tea. Inari sat beside him, hands folded in her lap. The image of demure womanhood, and yet he knew that Inari had on occasion been obliged to fight for her life, and done so fiercely. "I suppose it's just that I haven't come across them all that much." Did he detect a slight note of resentment in his own voice? The feeling that he'd been forced to battle on, more or less alone, doing the Goddess Kuan Yin's work in the world while the warriors of Heaven sat on their Celestial backsides—

"Darling, is everything all right?" Inari was gazing at him with some concern. "There's soup if you haven't eaten," she added.

Chen reached out and squeezed her hand. "I'm fine. Just distracted." A life dedicated to Heaven's behalf and yet the most support he'd had was from two of demonkind. He sighed. "I've got to go to Hell tomorrow evening. Zhu Irzh and Miss Qi and I have been put on this equal ops visit."

"Oh. All right," Inari said. She looked momentarily downcast. "How long will you be gone?"

"A few days. Not longer, I fervently hope, and if we can cut it short, we will. None of us want to be there, not even Zhu Irzh. Will you manage all right?" Inari could and did go out to the market on her own without being recognized as a demon, but Chen couldn't help worrying about her.

"I'll be fine," Inari said. As she spoke, something low and dark trundled out from beneath the bench and snapped at a moth. "I'll have badger, after all."

"I shall look after her," said her household's ancient familiar, through a mouthful of moth. Chen rather wished that he could take the badger with him; the creature was a denizen of Hell, after all, and had proved useful in the past. But it was more important for it to look after Inari.

"Will Zhu Irzh be taking Jhai?" Inari asked. They'd spent an evening at Paugeng, at a small private reception of Jhai's. The industrialist had been charming, complimenting Inari on an admittedly beautiful dress and spending some time in conversation with her. Tserai herself had looked rather fine, dressed in a purple and silver sari with her huge eyes outlined in kohl and the faint tiger stripes of her own demonic origins just visible on her darkly golden skin. Chen could certainly see the attraction, but he would as soon have gone to bed with the original tiger. When they had emerged into the cool night air, the only thing Inari had said was, "Be careful. I don't trust her."

"I've no intention of trusting her," Chen had replied.

Now, he said, "No, Tserai's not coming with us. I'd be surprised if she ventured into Hell, quite frankly. She has—business associates there who won't be too happy with her after the debacle a few months ago. She failed to give them Heaven, effectively."

"Do you think they'll come after her?" Inari said.

"I'm counting on it. But it won't be just yet. Hell takes a long time to revenge itself sometimes. As you know. Anyway, Zhu Irzh didn't seem all that keen on having her with him. I think he feels a cooling-off period might not be a bad idea. Says she's started to take too much for granted."

Inari grimaced. "That one will always take too much for granted. She thinks she can buy people."

"The trouble is," Chen said, "she's very often right."

He dreamed that he had already entered Hell. Zhu Irzh and Miss Qi were nowhere to be seen and neither was anyone else, but somehow, this did not seem to matter. He was walking along a promontory of scarlet rock, the cliffs tumbling down to a crashing, iron-colored sea. On the horizon, the storm clouds were gathering and he could see the flash of the spears and eyes of the kuei, the Storm Lords whose arbitrary, capricious law is said to govern the affairs of Hell. But this did not matter either and Chen strolled on, admiring the view. But suddenly, a figure was standing in his path with a hand upraised: a figure that changed as he looked at it—first a small boy, then an old man, and then something that was not human at all. It opened its mouth and gave a ringing cry. Chen covered his ears, but the cry went on and on, echoing from the scarlet cliffs until the world itself began to shatter and fall apart.

Chen's eyes snapped open. The sound was still going on, although now it was the telephone. When he groped for it, dropped it, and finally answered, with the dream still so fresh around him that he could smell saltwater, Zhu Irzh's voice said, "Chen! We've got a problem."

The days had settled into a routine. Each morning, Mrs Pa and her new grandson walked down to the market. Everyone made a great fuss over Precious Dragon. Mrs Pa had been hard put to explain how, after being married for only a few days and being, in any case, dead, her daughter had somehow managed to produce a two-year-old child with the demeanor and vocabulary of an elderly gentleman, but people seemed to understand. It was pretty odd, but then so were a great many things. Her neighbors appeared to accept it, at any rate, and walking through the market, the little boy was showered with candies, biscuits, and trinkets, all of which he accepted with the gravity of a visiting potentate. After the market each day, Mrs Pa took her grandson down to the edge of the wharf, where they sat watching the boats from Teveraya. Once they had watched a tanker bound for Beijing, built to withstand the equatorial storms. It was an enormous thing, almost a mile long, and Precious Dragon's mouth fell open when he saw it, nearly dislodging the pearl.

Later in the afternoons, they would sit outside Mrs Pa's house and receive visitors. Mr and Mrs Kung came, of course, hotfoot to see the little boy who was their grandchild, too. All the neighbors came, bringing their own children. The house had been a focus of activity for days. Mrs Pa found that she was enjoying herself. The only cloud on the horizon was her inability to contact Mai. She had been trying to phone for several days now, but on each occasion the line had crackled and spat, finally settling into an electronic hum. Mrs Pa went to the temple and renewed the spells that allowed communication between the two worlds, but they still failed her. She tried to tell herself that this was no more than some occult interference, but the matter still worried her.

Mrs Pa was washing the dishes when Precious Dragon came in, holding his toy tiger. He plucked at her dress.

"Grandma?"

"What is it?"

"Someone's in the outhouse."

Mrs Pa said, "How do you know?" Children, obviously, were fanciful, but it did not occur to her to treat this lightly.

"I heard them. They were scuffling about. I don't think we should go out there."

"Precious Dragon, if there's someone messing about in the backyard, I'm not just going to sit here. And I'm not going to call the police."

"I don't think we should go," he repeated. He did not have a normal child's stubbornness; this was a calm and reasoned statement.

"Then what should we do?" Without realizing it, her voice had dropped to a whisper.

"We should just watch. Put the light out. Pretend you've gone to bed."

Mrs Pa, trying not to look out of the kitchen window, crossed the room and switched the light off.

"Now," Precious Dragon said softly. They sat down on the seat by the window and waited. The sky was illuminated by the thousand lights of the city and so the yard was never completely dark, but it was difficult to see what was going on. Various possibilities were going through Mrs Pa's mind. It would be stupid to burgle her little house; there was nothing here, but someone might be sufficiently desperate or even crazy. They sent those of the demented whom they could not cure to the security fortress on the island of Moritana, but many took refuge in the disused mines of Bharulay or Orichay, or were sent for use in the hospitalization wings of the corporations. Those people, though, were the really hopeless cases, those whom the drugs were unable to reach—and not so many of them were wandering around the streets. Perhaps it was some lout having a joke, which would be on him, Mrs Pa thought. She kept a pepper spray under the sink; used correctly, it would blind. She reached for it now.

There was definitely something in the outhouse, because she could see the edges of the door rattling. Perhaps someone was stuck. But why on earth go into someone else's outhouse in the first place, if you didn't have to, of course? There were high walls between the houses, edged with razor-wire. Mrs Pa was beginning to feel rather unwell, a sick, dense pressure building up behind her eyes that she attributed to nerves, but it was most unpleasant. Unsteadily, she got off the chair and went to the back door. Outside, the light seeping from the door of the outhouse continued to grow, pulsing with the neon colors of sickness.