Heart and Soul (48 page)

Zhang nodded. He didn’t like being held prisoner, and he didn’t like the Englishmen. But his only hope for power lay in finding this palace and ambushing Red Jade.

And then he would deal with the Englishmen as they deserved. He’d let the pure of heart Englishman—he knew the colonel had already assigned one, and he hoped he was pure enough—pick up the ruby, then he’d take the boy far away. And then the Englishmen—and the world—would bow to him.

MAIDEN PERILOUS

“You didn’t kidnap her?” St. Maur asked Captain
Corridon, who looked at him in astonishment.

“Oh, I did. Or I thought I had. Now I wonder if I did, or if she was playing me all along.”

Peter felt sorry for the boy. In his life as an anarchist, he’d spent quite a lot of time chasing and killing Secret Service men. But this one—though Peter had called on a few friends and gathered a dossier for him—wasn’t truly a man. He was barely more than a boy. So far, he’d been engaged in simply fetching and carrying messages and papers, and in taking word here and there of this and that. From what Peter was given to understand, he’d performed nobly, but Peter thought he was now out of his depth.

“Where can she have gone?” he asked.

Corridon clutched at his red hair. “I don’t know. And I tell you—”

He stopped, as if he’d realized he was about to give away more of his feelings than he intended to.

“And you tell me?”

“I just want her back,” Corridon said, miserably. “I just want to know that she is safe. I brought her here…What if she falls in the hands of someone who is unscrupulous and who…and who hurts her or sells her to a brothel or…”

Peter started to realize that whatever else Corridon was, he was not in this simply as a means of advancing his career. Or, at least, he hadn’t taken Hettie from her parents simply as a means of obtaining information from them. No. It was quite clear that, whatever else was happening, Captain Corridon’s heart had been touched—and deeply, too—by the Perigord chit.

“You were fairly asking for it, you know?” he said, not sure of which of the perils he spoke: losing Hettie or falling in love with her. “Her parents tell me she’s quite a spirited handful. You approached the whole thing very cavalierly, as if she were no more than a young chit with no more knowledge of the world than a baby.”

“I know,” Corridon moaned. “I was stupid. But…but I got a glimpse of this conspiracy, and you’ll pardon me, because I would guess you are involved in it.” He looked around as if to make sure no one was within sight, then continued. “It has to be a giant conspiracy against the queen, something more complex than was ever assembled.”

As Corridon expounded on what he saw as the lineaments of a giant, international, interconnected conspiracy, Peter at first had trouble not laughing. And in the end—and though it was biologically impossible—he found himself saying, with a catch in his voice, “Son, don’t you see that it is nothing like that?”

Corridon looked at him, blankly. Peter told him, “It is nothing but friends and…and people knocked together by necessity or desire to acquire the rubies. They—we—came to realize that the rubies were more than the ambition of any sovereign or any group.”

The young man seemed bowled over by this idea. He first frowned at Peter, then his mouth dropped open. “But the queen wants them.”

“Well,” Peter said, “even the empress on whose empire the sun never sets has to go wanting now and then.”

“But…” Corridon said. He swallowed. “I’m Her Majesty’s soldier. It is my duty to obtain the rubies for her.”

Peter sighed. “I can quite see you imagine it is. However, you will have to decide which is the more important duty—to serve the queen or to make sure the universe doesn’t dissolve into its component parts.”

Corridon shook his head. “How can I even be sure you’re telling the truth?”

“You can’t, but I shall make a deal with you. Even now, I’m sure, my colleague is somewhere in China, seeking to recover the jewel he lost. When he’s done, he will take it and its twin to the avatar in the heart of Africa. I will endeavor to get you there for that moment, before, with the power of both rubies, the villagers conceal themselves and the rubies from the eyes of the curious forever. I will take you into the cave, where the rubies reside. If you can withstand their shine and their power, which—trust me—can sear into the souls of more hardened men than you, then I will accept that you must take them to the queen. I will even help you. I give you my word on it.”

Corridon’s eyes searched Peter’s face and seemed, at last, satisfied with what they found there. He nodded once. “What do I have to do for this?”

“Well,” Peter said, “not denounce me as a were—at least not unless you hear I’ve taken to feasting on humans. Right now, I’m no danger to anyone but the occasional stray sheep, and my wife punishes me for that by teasing me mercilessly. And do not denounce anyone else, either. Oh, and help me restore Hettie to her parents, where I’ve convinced my wife to stay for now.” He gave Corridon a jaundiced look. “The sad thing is that I think my wife, Sofie, Lady St. Maur, will become quite fond of Hettie and yourself. You both seem to be rogues of the first water.”

Corridon looked confused. “But how can I help you restore Hettie to her parents if I do not know where she is?”

“Ah,” Peter said. “You see, I have a dragon eye.”

“Of cour—”

“No,” Peter said, and pulled the object out of his pocket, holding it in his hand, shining deep and green. “The other one. When a dragon sacrifices it, in this way, it becomes the most powerful scrying instrument on Earth. It will show us where Hettie is, right enough.”

THE DRAGON EMPEROR RETURNS

They’d slept, and made love, and slept again on and
off all evening. In that cave, away from everyone else, Third Lady and Wen had enjoyed their long delayed nuptials. They’d even tried some of the things from those long-ago etchings. Only most of it seemed too formal and too hard to achieve properly, and they’d simply settled for coupling, clumsily and enthusiastically, filled with lust and love for each other.

Third Lady woke in the darkness, aware of being observed by her husband’s attentive and tender gaze. The fire, which they’d fed two more times, had now utterly died down. And Wen was looking at her. “I think,” he said. “It is time we head back. I do not know how long we stayed in the underworld. I’d guess not long, since the fire here was still burning, but long enough. And any minute now there will be an alarm on the boats, as they realize I am missing. I would hate to think to what madness my absence might tempt them. I’d like to tell you there is absolutely no way they will try to find Zhang, turn to him. But somehow…”

“If one branch of the tree disappears, they will look for the other branch,” Third Lady said.

“Just so.”

They dressed quickly and quietly, by the fairy lights twinkling on the ceiling of the cavern, and cleaned up the place, leaving it as they had found it.

“It could be centuries, you know,” Third Lady said, “before anyone needs it again.”

“I would hope so,” Wen said. “I wouldn’t like to think trips to the underworld are all that common.”

Later, in the rowboat, crossing the black night, they talked. “We must go to the record boat,” Wen said, “and find out for sure where Yu’s palace was. Only that will allow us to be there when it rises again.”

“We also need to find out where the council of dragons is supposed to take place,” Third Lady said.

“Assuredly the record boat will have that, too. The records of the rest of China have been burned several times over, but we still retain all the records we brought from our palace when the first usurpers attacked. And we’ve only added to it. We will find out.”

Third Lady lowered her head. “I hope so. Because I would hate to think that we will never find Lady Jade again.”

Wen laughed in that way she was just getting used to. “My tomboy of a sister will find her way back,” he said. “And I think I owe her and you the greatest debt of gratitude a man has ever owed two women.”

They rowed calmly through the night sky, until they got near the Dragon Boats, when they realized there was some great panic. People were running about, from boat to boat, and from all the boats a lamentation rose. Third Lady recognized it, and her hair stood on end.

It was the lament for a dead emperor—all the women and maidens of the clan ululating in unison.

WAKING THE YANG-TSE